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The Surd of M etaphysics 



An Inquiry Into the Question 



A re There Things-in- Themselves \ 



By 

Dr. Paul Car us 



Since Metaphysics of late 

without heirs to her fathers was gathered, 
Here at the auctioneer' s 

" things-in-themselves ' ' will be sold. 

— " JCenions" of Schiller and Goethe. 



Chicago 

The Ope?i Court Publishing Company 

London . 

Kcgan Paul, Trench, Triibner &* Co. Ltd. 

'9°3 



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THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 


Two Copies 


Received 


JUN 6 


1903 


'■ Copyright Entry 
CUSS CC- XXc. No. 


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copyright by 

The Open Court Publishing Co. 

1903. 



FOREWORD. 

r I A HE subject discussed in this book is one of the most important 
-■- of the problems of philosophy, and it is not difficult to under- 
stand that in its application to real life it is of a paramount prac- 
tical nature, not only in the domains of ethics and religion, but 
also in our general attitude toward the world and in our every-day 
doings. 

The idea of " things-in-themselves " originates as a natural 
phase in the evolution of human thought, and its formulation is as 
necessary as it is for certain purposes beneficial. In denouncing the 
belief in things-in-themselves as a superstition, we must therefore 
warn the student not to overlook the truth that is contained in it. 
For though there are no things-in-themselves, there are things, 
and, though it is not less wrong to hypostasise our ideas than it is 
to personify them in mythological figures, we must not regard them 
as flatus vocis only, as empty words, or mere names. For after 
all, they denote features of actual life which are real. And the 
concept of things-in-themselves underlies many other problems, 
where it is frequently so disguised as to be quite unrecognisable. 
For this reason it is not wise to deal with the subject off-hand, but 
to treat it in its connection with kindred questions in the domains 
of epistemology and metaphysics so called. Nor is it sufficient to 
state the solution only ; it is also desirable to illustrate its impor- 
tance by contrasting it with the views of philosophers that hold 
different opinions and still cling more or less to the antiquated be- 
lief in things-in-themselves. 



IV FOREWORD. 

Modern thought appears negative to the followers of the old 
schools, but it has its positive aspects, and these positive aspects 
should be made prominent. In doing so we shall not only be just 
to the old schools, but also establish the claim of modern thought 
to its due share of influence upon the events of the world. 

When we recognise the Unknown, and also the infinitude of 
possible progress, we need no longer cling to the superstitious be- 
lief in the Unknowable. Further, when we understand that im- 
agination, this child of sentiment and thought, has wings and that 
for all her erratic flights in the realm of fancy she now and then 
alights on a lofty crag in the ethereal realms of moral or religious 
aspiration to find there an important truth, which our slow-paced 
but sure-footed reason cannot as easily reach, we need neither in- 
sist upon the insufficiency and baseness of reason, nor extol the 
reliability of prophetic visions which are expressions of our reli- 
gious instinct. In appreciating one faculty, we need not cast a 
slur upon the other. 

The relation between the circumference and the diameter of 
the circle is quite definite and concrete, but if expressed of a 
numerical fraction its value can only be approximated, admitting 
of an infinite progress in accuracy. So the world is determinable 
and science is reliable in spite of the fact that her work can never 
be finished, and however much we progress and advance in the 
solution of life's problem, we can never reach the end. But this 
condition of things is not depressive to a healthy mind. On the 
contrary, it is an elevating idea that the source of knowledge will 
never run dry, and that the waters of life are inexhaustible. 

The Author. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



THE ELIMINATION OF THE METAPHYSICAL SURD 
FROM PHILOSOPHY. 

PAGE 

The Faust Attitude in Philosophy i 

Things-in-Themselves 6 

The Object and Its Qualities n 

Kant's View of Space and Time ------ 15 

Form a Feature of Reality 19 

Things and Relations 23 

The Ideal and the Subjective 31 

The Oneness of Subjectivity and Objectivity 39 

The Reality of the Objective World - - - - 45 

Knowledge as Description ------- 48 

The Metaphysical x not Unknown ------ 52 

The Metaphysical Surd Eliminated 56 

Philosophy Defined 60 

THE METAPHYSICAL RESIDUE IN THE SYSTEMS 
OF MODERN THINKERS 

French Positivism Represented by Comte and Littre - - 65 
Herbert Spencer's Agnosticism ------ 78 

Clifford and Schopenhauer ------- 79 

Professor Deussen's Modernised Metaphysics - - - 90 

Professor Friedrich Jodl ------- 101 

Professor Ernst Mach - - 131 

Truth in Mythology 139 

THE SOUL AS A THING-IN-ITSELF. 

What is Soul ? 145 

Mentality and the Universal Laws of Form - - - 148 

Unity and Variety - 145 



VI THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

PAGE 

The Unity of Consciousness ------ 156 

Immortality ---------- 159 

The Immortality of Books 162 

The Simile of the Seal -------- 163 

The Purpose of Life 164 

Panpsychism and Panbiotism 169 

Thomas A. Edison's Panpsychism 175 

The Nature of Intelligence ------- 179 

Psychological Dualism - 185 

English Transcendentalism 187 

The Ego-Centric View Abandoned 195 

Personality and Evolution 197 

The " Pferdebiirla " - - 202 

Prof. F. Max Miiller • 205 

Ideas, the Eternal Types of Things 212 

Reason - - - 2I 5 

Forms-in-Themselves, Not Things-in-Themselves - - 219 

The Self of Man 222 

Index 227 



THE ELIMINATION OP THE META- 
PHYSICAL SURD FROM 
PHILOSOPHY. 

THE FAUST ATTITUDE IN PHILOSOPHY. 

FAUST had studied all the sciences, had taken 
degrees in the four faculties, and had become a 
famous professor in the university. Yet in the mono- 
logue with which Goethe opens his grand drama, he 
stands before us a self-confessed ignoramus, whose 
lectures are a mere waste of time, since he does not 
teach things worth knowing, and whose despair 
reaches its climax in the proclamation of the dreary 
doctrine that knowledge is impossible. He says : 

"I've studied now Philosophy 
And Jurisprudence, Medicine, — 
And even, alas! Theology, — 
From end to end, with labor keen ; 
And here, poor fool ! with all my lore 
I stand no wiser than before : 
I'm Magister — yea, Doctor — hight, 
And straight or cross-wise, wrong or right, 
These ten years long, with many woes, 
I've led my scholars by the nose, — 
And see, that nothing can be known ! " 



2 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

Goethe's magnificent drama has exercised upon 
the minds of all civilised nations an influence little 
less than that of the Bible ; and here we are con- 
fronted with a statement of the impossibility of scien- 
tific research. But if science is vain, what shall we 
do? Are we not like miners in search of useful and 
precious metals, groping our way in the dark labyrinth 
of excavations underground, with the assistance of the 
lamp of scientific method ? If science after all is but 
vanity, had we not better extinguish our lamp and 
abandon ourselves to the mercy of circumstances ? 

The Faust attitude is apt to exercise a baneful in- 
fluence upon youthful minds, who thus accustom 
themselves to find the acme of wisdom in the con- 
clusion that cognition is an unprofitable sport, knowl- 
edge vain, and science the empty conceit of a deluded 
brain. 

Faust's words are often quoted in order to give the 
prestige of Goethe's authority to the agnostic doc- 
trine ; but let us bear in mind that we must explain 
the words of the passage from its context ; they con- 
tain the exposition of the dramatic plot, embodying 
Faust's fundamental error from which all his later 
mistakes arise. Far from being endorsed by Goethe, 
they are proposed for refutation, and Mephistopheles, 
behind Faust's back, triumphantly says : 

" Despise thou reason, scoff at science, 
Which are man's highest and best power, 
And thou art mine beyond recall." 



THE FAUST ATTITUDE IN PHILOSOPHY. 3 

["Verachte nur Vernunft und Wissenschaft, 
t)er Menschen allerhochste Kraft, 
Und du bist mein schon ganz gewiss ! "] 

The surrender of science is the way to perdition. 

Faust began his studies from the top, not from the 
bottom. He began with philosophy, and we may well 
assume that the philosophy he studied consisted of 
that metaphysical verbiage which regards knowledge 
as a comprehension of things-in-themselves. Faust 
apparently imagines that so long as we do not know 
what things-in-themselves are, all our knowledge re- 
mains purely phenomenal and worthless. No wonder 
that he is desperate, for as he states himself, he 
"rummages in empty words." 

According to the metaphysical method of philos- 
ophising, we know of gold that it is yellowish or red- 
dish, that it is heavier than other metals, possessing 
in its pure state a certain specific weight, that it does 
not corrode, is ductile or malleable, etc.; but all our 
chemical knowledge avails us nothing unless we un- 
derstand what the essence of gold is. John Locke, 
one of the soberest philosophers, adopts this line of 
argument saying : 

As "it is plain that the word 'gold' stands in the 
place of a substance, having the real essence of a 
species of things made by nature," our notion that 
gold is something fixed, "is a truth which will always 
fail us in its particular application, and so is of no 
real use or certainty . . . For if we know not the real 



4 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

essence of gold, it is impossible we should know what 
parcel of matter has that essence, and so whether it 
be true gold or no." — An Essay Concerning Human 
Understanding, III, vi, 50. 

Phenomenal knowledge apparently touches only 
the surface of existence, and we are told that what we 
need is metaphysical knowledge ; but metaphysical 
knowledge can be as little obtained as the blue flower 
of Wonderland in the hopeless quest of which the 
knights-errant of yore were busily engaged. 

The fatal error of metaphysics is the reification or 
hypostatisation and substantiation of names. Gold is 
supposed to be an essence which is in possession of 
many properties. The properties are knowable, but 
the essence itself remains unknown. The error is ob- 
vious enough : the properties of gold are, in truth, 
qualities ; gold is the sum-total of all its qualities, and 
we know what gold is as soon as we know all the 
qualities of gold. 

Among the philosophers of the eighteenth century 
Bishop Berkeley (commonly and, even by Kant, er- 
roneously regarded as a denier of reality) is the only 
one who reached the proper conclusion that substance 
does not exist. 

While metaphysicians mystified themselves and 
others with things-in-themselves and with the idea of 
metaphysical knowledge, the investigators in the vari- 
ous branches of science, nothing daunted, continued 
in their search for truth, and it became an established 



THE FAUST ATTITUDE IN PHILOSOPHY. 5 

doctrine of the day that science and philosophy were 
diametrically opposed. The philosopher looked down 
upon the scientist, whom he ridiculed for imagining 
himself in possession of a parcel of truth, while in 
fact his knowledge was a mere illusion. The scientist, 
on the other hand, smiled at the ingenuous pride of 
the philosopher whose grandiloquent phrases were 
either the vagaries of dreamers or trivial truisms con- 
cealed in the garb of pompous declamations. Some 
scientists tried to keep in contact with metaphysics, 
but others cut themselves loose from it, and Kirch- 
hoff, in order to avoid the mysticism into which the 
metaphysical conception of knowledge is liable to in- 
volve a thinker, replaced in his Mechanics the term 
"knowledge" by "description," declaring that the ob- 
ject of mechanics is to describe with exhaustive thor- 
oughness and the greatest attainable simplicity the 
motions that take place in nature. Professor Mach, 
born of the same spirit of modern science, indepen- 
dently of Kirchhoff, spoke of cognition as a mimicry 
or mental reconstruction of facts — ein Nachbilden der 
Thatsachen. 1 

After science and philosophy had separated, 
science began to split up into innumerable special- 
ties, and philosophy lost itself more and more in the 



1 See Professor Mach's great work, The Science of Mechanics, his Monist 
articles, passim, and especially his "Address Delivered Before the General 
Session of the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians, at Vienna, 
September, 24, 1894," published at p. 236 of his Popular Scientific Lectures 
(Chicago : The Open Court Pub. Co. 1898, third edition). 



6 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

labyrinthian woods of metaphysics. The consequence 
was that the need of a reconciliation was strongly 
felt, and approaches were made from both sides to 
reach an amicable status quo, in order to keep philos- 
ophy sound and to preserve the solidarity of all knowl- 
edge in the sciences through the establishment of a 

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. 

Many a scientist is inclined simply to ignore the 
pretensions of metaphysics, but that will not do ; for 
there is a truth at the bottom of its vagaries which 
should not be neglected, and the declaration that 
the nature of knowledge of any kind, in matters 
philosophical or scientific, is a description of facts 
will not be satisfactory until we understand the 
full importance of this definition. What we need is, 
first a mutual understanding between philosophers 
and scientists, and then a reconciliation of their points 
of view. We need a philosophy of, science, whose 
duty it is to prune philosophical speculation, to render 
science conscious of its aim and methods, to correlate 
the various branches of investigation, and systematise 
its most important results in the grand outlines of a 
scientifically sound world-conception. 

THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. 

The proposition that things-in-themselves cannot 
be known, has often, and perhaps justly, been pro- 
claimed as the central idea of Kant's philosophy. 



THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. 7 

Kant concludes the first section of his Transcendent ale 
Elementarlehre with this "critical admonition" : 

"That in general nothing which is intuited in space is a thing 
in itself, and that space is not a form which belongs as a property 
to things ; but that objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, 
and what we call outward objects are nothing else but mere rep- 
resentations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose 
real correllate, the thing in itself, is not known by means of these 
representations, nor ever can be." {Kritik d. r. V. § 4.) 

The term "thing-in-itself " means originally the 
object as it is, independent of the thinking subject's 
cognition. For instance : A rainbow appears in the 
clouds ; the rainbow is not a thing-in-itself, but the 
appearance of a thing-in-itself. The rainbow exists 
in man's sensibility only. The colors of the spectrum, 
indeed all colors, the colors of the sky, of the clouds, 
of trees, of living beings, are sensations only; they 
are subjective phenomena, they are certain kinds of 
feelings representing objective realities, but they are 
not these objective realities themselves. They are 
perceived in the brain and are projected to a place 
outside the organism. The rainbow, as it is seen, is 
not a thing, but it is something seen, it is an appear- 
ance only. And this is true of all things seen and 
heard and perceived by any one of the senses. The 
sense-images are localised in space, they are pro- 
jected outside to a spot where the combined ex- 
perience of the senses has taught a sentient being to 
expect them. But all the objects of the objective 



8 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

world as they are perceived are and remain subjective 
sense-perceptions. The world of our senses around 
us is woven of our sensations. It is mere appearance. 
This is not a question concerning which there is any 
doubt, this is simply a matter of fact. But the ques- 
tion arises, "Can we know things as they are in- 
dependent of sensation? Can we know things-in- 
themselves ? " 

The physicist and every scientist is engaged with 
the problem, What are natural phenomena indepen- 
dent of sensation? Light is a sensation of vision, but 
what is the objective process that takes place when a 
human eye perceives light? The physicist answers 
this problem by eliminating in his mind the sense- 
element and by describing the facts of the process in 
terms of matter and motion. His answer is that light, 
objectively considered, is a certain vibration of the 
ether. If we can rely upon physical science, the thing- 
in-itself of a rainbow would be a certain refraction of 
ether-waves. These vibrations of the ether-waves are 
transmitted from the sun, and being broken in the 
falling raindrops take place independent of cognition ; 
they are real whether we look at them or not. 

The ultimate aim of science is a description of the 
natural phenomena not in terms of sense-elements, 
but in terms of form. That feature of a thing which 
we call its matter, constitutes its reality, but the form 
of a thing, of a motion, or of a process makes the 
thing that which it is ; every act of causation is a 



THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. 9 

change of form, and the forms of things are deter- 
mined with the assistance of the operations of purely 
formal thought, i. e., through measuring or counting. 
Such is science, not only as it ought to be, but also 
as it actually is. All our scientists, each one in his 
field, are consciously or unconsciously working out a 
solution of this problem. And a solution of this prob- 
lem means, in our conception, the objective cognition 
of the world — i. e., a description of the natural pro- 
cesses as they are independent of sensibility. 

Kant knew very well that a description of things 
and of natural processes in terms of form was pos- 
sible. He clung, nevertheless, to the proposition that 
things-in-themselves are unknowable. And why? A 
description of things and of natural processes in terms 
of form was in his opinion not as yet a description of 
things-in-themselves, for — and here we are confronted 
with the original idea and the fundamental error of 
Kantian thought — Kant did not consider the forms of 
things as an objective quality of theirs, he maintained 
that the formal element is purely mental and merely 
subjective. The thinking mind, he declared, attrib- 
utes them to the object. Space and time, the pure 
forms of existence, together with all other forms, such 
as causation, are, according to Kant, not qualities of 
the objective world, but of the thinking subject. The 
thinking subject cannot help viewing the world in the 
form of its own cognition, it transfers these forms to 
the objects. Therefore the thing-in-itself according 



IO THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

to Kant would not be represented in a description of 
the thing purely in terms of form ; the thing-in-itself 
would mean the thing as it would be, independent of 
time and space. 

Let us here point out a distinction between the 
thing-in-itself and noumenon. 1 Noumenon means "a 
thing of thought." The noumenal world is the world 
of thoughts in a thinking being's mind. The noume- 
non must not be identified with the thing-in-itself. 
The two terms are often confounded, but they have 
to be distinguished. The idea of reflected ether-vibra- 
tions is a noumenon, the objective process is the thing, 
i. e., an objective reality, and in so far as they are a 
reality, considered as being independent of sensation, 
we may call them "a thing-in-itself." 

When Kant denies the objectivity of time and 
space, he must, implicitly, also deny the objectivity 
of things. The pictorial world of our sense-percep- 
tion is subjective, it is built up of sensations, it is not 
objective ; and the world of thought is the attempt to 
reduce the subjective world of sense-imagery to terms 
of objective validity, i. e., to terms of form, — form 
being an objective quality of things. But this world 
of thought is, according to Kant, not only mental, but 
purely mental ; it is purely noumenal. In other words, 
noumena do not represent things independent of cog- 

1 Pronounce No-oo-me-non, not noomenon as some dictionaries have it. 
The Greek original (the passive participle neuter form of voziv to think) is 
voovixtvov, the u in its German and English transcriptions represents the 
Greek ov. 



THE OBJECT AND ITS QUALITIES. II 

nition, they represent things as our mind thinks them. 
The sensory world is mere appearance, it is a subjec- 
. tive phenomenon, but the world of thought, says Kant, 
is not less subjective; it is a world of thought which 
describes things in terms of purely mental properties 
and not in properties of the things themselves. This 
is tantamount to the proposition, that things-in-them- 
selves cannot be known. 

The term "thing-in-itself," in the sense of a thing 
as it is independent of sensibility, would better be 
called "the objective thing," and we shall so call it 
when we wish to distinguish it from Kant's thing-in- 
itself. The objective thing is the thing, not expressed 
in terms of subjective elements, such as feelings or 
sensibility, but in terms of objective elements, i. e., 
in terms of form. That a description of things in 
terms of forms is possible has never been denied 
either by Kant or by any Kantian ; but they deny that 
these descriptions are anything more than mere nou- 
mena; Kant and the orthodox Kantians deny that 
they represent the things as they are in themselves. 
Thus the term " thing-in-itself " in the Kantian sense 
comes to mean the thing as it is independent of space 
and time. 

THE OBJECT AND ITS QUALITIES. 

That every noumenon is a mental sign is a matter 
of course ; the noumenal world is ideal. But we main- 
tain that these mental signs represent real qualities of 



12 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

the objective world ; they have a meaning ; the things 
represented by them are actual features of reality. 
Kant does not acknowledge this. To him the nou- 
menal world is purely noumenal. To Kant there is 
no space outside the space-conception, and so he de- 
clares that space is ideal ; it is not an objective quality 
of things. However, we maintain that our space-con- 
ception describes, i. e., depicts or represents, space 
our space-conception is ideal, yet -space is not ideal 
but real ; it is an objective quality of the world. 

Kant's view is dualistic, or at least necessarily 
leads to dualism, and it appears to rest on an unpro- 
nounced dualistic assumption. Kant treats "the sub- 
ject" as something quite distinct and separate from 
"the object." If he had borne in mind that the sub- 
ject is always at the same time an object, he would 
have treated both subject as well as object as mere 
abstractions of one and the same reality. Resting 
upon this erroneous presupposition, Kant's most con- 
sequential mistake, in our opinion, was his concep- 
tion of what he called "the ideality of time and space. " 
If time and space were purely ideal, purely mental, 
purely subjective, then indeed, the things as they are 
would forever remain unknown to us; then indeed the 
thinking mind would be as if shut up within a hollow 
globe out of which it could never escape; then indeed 
the world would be divided into two parts, the objec- 
tive world and the subjective world ; and the gap be- 
tween both could never be bridged over. The think- 



THE OBJECT AND ITS QUALITIES. I 3 

ing mind would have within itself a noumenal world 
built upon the subjective elements of sense-impres- 
sions. This subjective world would possess no ob- 
jective value, it would not describe realities, and the 
objective world would thus be unknowable, inscru- 
table, and mystical. 

The idea of a thing-in-itself found further support 
in a mistaken conception of the unity of certain things, 
especially of organisms. The unity of a combination 
of parts is not merely the sum of the parts, it consists 
in their peculiar combination which makes an har- 
monious co-operation possible. This unity is an ad- 
ditional element ; it is an entirely new creation which 
exhibits features not contained in any of its parts. 
There is no latent watch contained in a heap of little 
wheels and cogs; the watch is created through the 
combination of these wheels and cogs. The unity of 
thing is its form, consisting in a special arrangement 
of its parts ; and this form although not material is 
nevertheless real. 

The materialistic conception overlooks or under- 
rates the importance of form ; but the spiritualist and 
also the transcendentalist materialise it as some spir- 
itual substance, or essence, as an entity or indepen- 
dent existence. They are in this way as much ma- 
terialistic as the materialist. 

To elucidate the problem "What are things-in- 
themselves?" let us ask the question: What is a 
melody-in-itself ? The question has sense when we un- 



14 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

derstand by it, What are those new qualities which 
appear through a certain combination of sounds? 
Those qualities are not nothing, they are something 
new and quite peculiar. We call one of them rhythm, 
another one is the fixed succession of notes of a dif- 
ferent pitch. The qualities of a melody as a whole are 
not qualities of its separate parts ; the melody is 
something new which originates through their com- 
bination ; yet therefore the melody is not a thing-in 
itself; and if we understand by " thing-in-itself " the 
objective process of its rehearsal, then, certainly, no 
melody is independent of time and space. 

Take another illustration. We might just as well 
speak of a watch in itself, meaning thereby that pe- 
culiar unity of the combination of its parts which 
makes of them a watch. But if we thus speak of 
"the watch in itself," we must be aware that this idea 
has not somewhere in a transcendental fairy-land an 
independent existence above space and time, and out- 
side of its parts. The unity of a certain interacting 
group of parts is, on the one hand, not merely an ad- 
dition made by the thinking subject, it is not purely 
noumenal, it is real and objective. The unity, if com- 
plete, is a new factor which has an efficacy of its own. 
On the other hand it is not a thing-in-itself, indepen- 
dent of its parts ; it is the product of the relations in 
which its parts affect one another. 

Is not perhaps the basis of these vagaries a mis- 
taken conception of language ? We call a certain 



kant's views of space and time. 15 

sensory picture a tree and we say, the tree has roots, 
a stem, branches, leaves, and fruits. Autumn sets in 
and the wind shakes the leaves off the branches. Now 
we speak of a leafless tree. We cut the tree down 
and we speak of a rootless tree. We burn the trunk 
and the branches, and the tree as a phenomenon is 
gone, all its properties are taken away. What re- 
mains ? The tree-in-itself is left, but the tree-in-itself 
does not exist. If all the property of a person is taken 
from him, the person himself is still left. The prop- 
erties of a tree, however, are not properties in the same 
sense; they are qualities. If all the qualities and parts 
of a tree are gone, if only the tree-in-itself is left — 
then there is left nothing but the empty word tree, 
the idea of a tree. 

KANT'S VIEW OF SPACE AND TIME. 

Let us briefly consider the ground upon which 
Kant bases his view of the ideality of space and time. 
Kant asks : 

" What then are time and space ? Are they real existences ? 
Or are they merely relations or determinations of things, such 
however as would equally belong to these things-in-themselves, 
though they should never become objects of intuition ; or are 
they stick as belong otily to the form of intuition, and conse~ 
quently to the subjective constitutio?i of the mind, without which 
these predicates of time and space could not be attached to any 
object? "* {Kritik der reine?i Vernunft, § 2 ; Mciklejohn, p. 31.) 

1 Italics are ours. Kant affirms the italicised question. 



l6 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

We should say, to state our opinion briefly, that 
space and time are not "real existences," i. e. they 
are not concrete objects, but they are real never- 
theless ; they are not material things, not thingish 
realities, yet they are objective qualities of things. 
They are the forms of things and processes, and be- 
long to the things whether they become objects of 
cognition or not. In this sense, they actually belong 
to the objects themselves, viz. to the objective things, 
such as they are independent of cognition. 

Kant argues that space and time are not concep- 
tions derived from outward experience ; they have not 
been abstracted from sense-impressions. They are 
necessary representations a priori, they are not dis- 
cursive ideas or generalisations, for there is but one 
space and one time, space being represented as in- 
finite and time as eternal. 

From these arguments Kant draws the conclusions 
that space and time do not represent qualities of an 
object but that they are the form of all sensory phe- 
nomena, space being the form of the external, time of 
the internal sense, whatever that may mean. In other 
words, space and time belong to the subjective condi- 
tion of the sensibility and not to the objective world. 

We answer that our conceptions of space and time 
are after all derived from experience. Space and time 
are abstractions. We grant that there is no time in 
itself and no space in itself. Space and time are not 
directly derived from outward experience, nor are they 



kant's views of space and time. 17 

derived from the sense-elements of experience. Inner 
experience, i. e. reflection (or thought) to the exclu- 
sion of sense-impression, the experimenting with pure 
forms, will lead to the construction of the concepts of 
space as well as of time. Space and time, magnitudes 
and numbers, having been constructed in the mind of 
a thinking subject are applied to practical experience. 
When counting three trees we do not abstract the 
number "three" from the three trees, but having con- 
structed the system of numbers, we apply it to objects 
around us. 
Says Kant : 

• ' We never can imagine or make a representation to ourselves 
of the non-existence of space, though we may easily enough think 
that no objects are found in it. It must therefore be considered as 
the condition of the possibility of phenomena and by no means as 
a determination dependent upon them and is a representation a 
'prio7~i y which necessarily supplies the basis for external phe- 
nomena." 

Space being the generalised concept of extended 
form, and time that of motion without reference to any 
contents, it will, so long as we think or move or have 
our being, naturally prove impossible to think the 
non-existence of space and time. Thinking is an act, 
it is a process ; and any act, any process, any event, is 
a reality which implies or presupposes the existence of 
the forms of reality. We can think of matter without 
reference to form, i. e. we can have the abstract idea 
of matter ; but we cannot think that there is any mat- 



l8 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

ter void of form. This by no means proves that 
form has nothing to do with matter. On the contrary, 
it proves that form and matter are inseparable. The 
form of existence need not therefore be called "the 
basis" of existence, it is simply one universal feature 
of existence. And the form of existence being bound 
up with existence itself, it is necessary that any think- 
ing existence, in so far as it is real, in so far as it is at 
the same time an object and part of the objective 
world, should also be in possession of the conditions 
to evolve the idea of form out of itself through inner 
experience. 

This inner experience of experimenting with pure 
forms is different from outer experience, but it is also 
a kind of experience. It is not a purely subjective 
process ; it is a subjective process to the thinking sub- 
ject, which to other subjects, however, would appear 
as an objective process. The laws of pure form as 
stated in the sciences of purely formal thought, are 
not merely subjective ; they possess objective valid- 
ity. It is true and from our standpoint a matter of 
course that the laws of form are a priori, which means, 
they hold good for any pure form. 

Modern positivism, such as we defend it, is mo- 
nistic. We consider the entire world as one great 
whole and do not forget that all noumenal representa- 
tions of certain features of the world, of matter, mind, 
form, even of things and our own souls included, are 
mere abstractions. Reality itself remains undivided 



FORM A FEATURE OF REALITY. 1 9 

and indivisible. Abstract concepts are mental symbols 
invented to represent certain features of reality. But 
although we can in our mind separate these features 
and distinguish them from other features, in the world 
of reality they cannot be cut out and separated from 
the rest or thought of as things-in-themselves. Grant- 
ing the oneness of reality which dawns upon us in- 
stinctively before consciousness is fully matured, we 
are inevitably led to the conception that there may be 
many space-conceptions, yet there is but one form of 
reality, which implies that there is but one space and 
one time. 

FORM A FEATURE OF REALITY. 

Kant says, and in this we agree with Kant, that 
"all thought must directly by means of certain signs 
relate ultimately to Anschauungen." The word An- 
schauung (literally: "onlooking," generally translated 
by "intuition") means the immediate presence of 
sense-perception. Says Kant : 

"The effect of an object upon our faculty of representation is 
called sensation, and that intuition {Anschauung) which refers to 
an object by means of sensation is called empirical intuition." 

For instance, I see a rose : the image of the rose 
which I see is the appearance or the phenomenon. 
Kant continues : 

"That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation 
I term its matter, but that which effects that the contents of the 
phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call its 
form." 



20 . THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

In other words matter is that which affects the 
senses and form is to be expressed in relations. The 
difference between the formal and the material is ob- 
vious. The formal is of great importance, nay, it is 
of paramount importance, but it is neither anything 
apart from the material nor is it a substance. Both 
concepts are disparate, though derived by mental ab- 
straction from the same reality. 

We fully agree with Kant when he continues : 

"That in which our sensations are merely arranged, and by 
which they are susceptible of assuming a certain form, cannot be 
itself sensation." 

But we do not agree with Kant when from this 
proposition he derives the following conclusion : 

"It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us 
a posteriori; the form must lie ready a priori for them in the 
mind, and consequently can be regarded separately from all 
sensation." 

Here lies the great fallacy of Kant, which rests 
upon an erroneous statement and an actual distortion 
of fact. The phenomenon of a rose which I see be- 
fore me is not merely sensory, but also formal. The 
phenomenon, i. e. the image of the rose (die Anschau- 
ung) is a sensation of a special form. The term sensa- 
tion as it is generally used implies its having a special 
form. Accordingly the form does not, at least not 
from the beginning, lie ready a priori in the mind ; 
forms are given together with the sensation. 

Kant speaks of "that which is annexed to percep- 



FORM A FEATURE OF REALITY. 21 

tion by the conceptions of understanding," as if our 
understanding added the formal out of the mind to the 
sensory elements given by experience. What is the 
mind? The mind is a product of the world ; it is a 
system of symbols representing the things of the 
world and their relations including such possible re- 
lations as are worthy of aspiring for. In short, the 
mind consists of ideas and ideals. 1 

It has often been said that the mind is the creator 
of the sensory and noumenal world. This is incor- 
rectly expressed, for mind is the sensory and nou- 
menal world itself. The sense-pictures, the thought- 
symbols, and the ideals of a man are actual parts of 
this mind. They are not products but constituents of 
his mind. Their organised totality is his mind itself. 
The activity which takes place in a mind, i. e. the 
combining, the separating, and recombining of mem- 
ories, thoughts, and ideals are the actual realities, and 
if we speak of a man's understanding, or reason, or 
any other so-called faculty, we have to deal with ab- 
stractions. The activity of mentally separating form 
and matter might be called by the general term un- 
derstanding. However the faculty of understanding 
is not a distinct mental organ, it consists in the several 
acts of understanding, and the word understanding is 
a mental symbol representing them all together as if 
they were one thing. 



1 The problem of " The Origin of the Mind " having been discussed else- 
where, need not concern us here. See The Soul of Man, pp. 23-46. 



22 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

And certainly these acts of understanding as little 
import the formal into the world of sensation as the 
miner carries the metals into the mines. The formal, 
the relational, or the a priori, is first extracted out of 
the data of experience not otherwise than iron is 
gained out of the ores. The ore is not iron but it con- 
tains iron, the phenomenon of a rose is not purely a 
sense-impression, it is a sense-impression of a certain 
form. We are aware of the fact that mind is an en- 
tirely new creation different from the non-mental 
world, yet at the same time we maintain that the 
elements from which mind develops are the same as 
the elements of the non-mental world. Nature fur- 
nishes the entire raw material and whatever new crea- 
tion the product of a new development is, nothing 
can be added to the raw material, of which the formal 
is the most indispensable part. 

The raw material of sensory phenomena as soon as 
it is worked out, and also the activity of working it 
out are called mind. Mind accordingly originates with 
the appearance of sentient substance as the organisa- 
tion of feelings and the memories of feelings — these 
memories being conditioned through the preservation 
of the form of sentient substance. Mind is not some- 
thing different from the world but must be considered 
as its product and highest efflorescence. Mind is 
made of the same substance as the universe and the 
mind-forms are a reflection of the forms of objective 
existence. 



THINGS AND RELATIONS. 23 

As soon as a system of forms has developed in a 
sentient being, thus constituting its mind, this system 
can be referred to the objective forms of things. In 
this sense we can say with Kant, that the understand- 
ing imports form into phenomena; and this importa- 
tion is a re-importation. It is an essential element 
of cognition, that we systematise form and then refer 
the objectively formal to the subjective system of 
formal thought. 

THINGS AND RELATIONS. 

The proposition that things-in-themselves are un- 
knowable finds a strong argument in the statement 
that we know relations only and that all knowledge is 
relative. Undoubtedly this is true ; but what is a 
relation ? 

When I once proposed this question, I was an- 
swered : 

" A relation is the connection between two things; it is that 
something in which the one stands to the other, in short, it is the 
betwixtness of things." 

This is exactly what a relation is not. From such 
a definition of relation agnosticism will necessarily 
follow. It is a misstatement of the case, and when 
we come to follow out the idea, we shall be led into 
inextricable contradictions, and unless we revise the 
whole argument, we shall have to confess that we are 
at our wits' end. 

The question, What is relation ? was one of the 



2 4 



THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 



issues between the two great mediaeval schools of phi- 
losophy, the Nominalists and the Realists. 1 The Nom- 
inalists answered: "A relation is a mere product of 
the mind," while the Realists declared that "a. rela- 
tion without which the thing cannot be, is in the 
thing." 

Both schools relied upon Aristotle's authority. 
Aristotle had declared that matter is mere possibility 
of existence (it is Swa/xei 6V) and form is that which 
makes it real, the formal is the real, form is existence 
or being (ovcrta). The metal of a statue, Aristotle 
says, is its matter, the idea of the statue is its form, 
both together make the real statue. The metal hav- 
ing had another form before, did not exist with the in- 
herent purpose of being this metal of the statue. The 
metal is the mere potentiality of becoming a statue. 2 
Hence, says Aristotle, not the matter but the form 
constitutes the reality of the statue, the form is that 
which is real, or that which makes actual, hepyda 6v, 
it is the being in completeness or actuality, ci/reAexa'a 
6v, i. e. that which makes a thing exist in its purpose 
(ev rcAet *x uv )- ^ tne formal alone is and makes real, 
relations must be real. This is in favor of the Realists. 

Yet Aristotle's philosophy is not in every respect 

1 It is scarcely necessary to mention that mediaeval Realism is different 
from modern Realism. 

2 Aristotle's idea of matter being potential existence is a fiction. Fictions 
of that kind are useful for certain purposes, but we must not forget that they 
are fictions. We might just as well introduce any other system of fictions. 
For instance we might with certainly not less propriety look upon the idea in 
the mind of an artist as potential reality while its appearance in a material 
shape is conceived to produce actual reality. 



THINGS AND RELATIONS. 25 

clearly worked out. In fact there are two Aristotles, 
the one being a Platonist, the other a naturalist, the 
one believing in universals, the other investigating 
concrete things and taking individuals as real beings. 
But both Aristotles and with them both parties of the 
schoolmen had no clear conception of the nature of 
ideas, what they are, and what they purport, and how 
we can discriminate between their subjective and ob- 
jective elements. Ideas have a meaning. Is their mean- 
ing purely mental or has it an objective value ? We 
say that it has. 

The same Aristotle who considered the formal as 
that which makes real, denied the objective existence 
of relations. He said that such qualities as greater, 
or smaller, double or half, indeed all relations (the 
7rp6<s tl of things) did not belong to the things, but 
were added to them by the thinking subject. Ergo 
relations are mere products of'the mind, they have no 
objective value. This was in favor of the Nom- 
inalists. 

Now it is true that some relations are purely 
mental in so far as the comparison upon which they 
rest is purely imaginary. An answer to the question, 
Who was the greater, Alexander or Caesar ? depends 
upon the standard of measurement which we create 
for the special purpose. Some such relations have no 
objective value, they are not facts but a play of imagi- 
nation dependent on the recognition of the standard 
of measurement. But how is it, if we express the 



26 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

relation between the gravity of a stone and the whole 
mass of the earth as it manifests itself in the stone's 
fall? Is that also a mere product of the mind ? Cer- 
tainly Newton's laws describing gravitation in exact 
and mathematical formulas are a product of the mind, 
but this product of the mind has an objective value, it 
has a meaning, it describes facts, and these facts are 
certain relations between certain things. 

* 
* * 

The fault of the modern misconception of relativity 
lies in the assumption that the two or more things are 
considered as things-in-themselves. We are apt to 
consider the gravity of two masses, of a stone and of 
the earth, as a relation between two independent 
things. Here is the stone and there is the earth and 
the relation is considered as some third item, being 
the connection in which the one stands to the other. 

In reality there are not two things and, in addition 
to them, a betweenness of the two things. The world 
is not a sum of things, not even a system of things, 
but a whole indivisible entirety and what we call 
things are abstractions which serve special purposes 
in the household of cognition. All things consist, as 
it were, of innumerable relations to all other things. 
When we abstract one special process which takes 
place in the province of what we are wont to call two 
things, we have to deal with a relation. 

There are no relations-in-themselves and there are 
no things-in-themselves. Relations describe certain 



THINGS AND RELATIONS. 27 

features of reality obtaining between what we call 
two or more things, and in this description all other 
features of which the real things consist are purposely 
omitted. 

There is no quality of things that is not at the same 
time a quality of relation. Every quality of a thing 
characterises it under a certain condition ; it appears 
as an effect upon something and thus it is actual as a 
relation. Cognition analyses things into bundles of 
relations and all these relations together make up the 
things. 

The modern idea that we can know relations only 
and that there are things-in-themselves which are un- 
knowable is an old error inherited from mediaeval 
scholasticism, and its roots can be traced back to the 
philosophy of Aristotle. The difficulty disappears as 
soon as we consider the whole world (ourselves in- 
cluded) as an interacting whole, and that the concep- 
tions ''things" and "relations" have been invented 
for describing certain of its parts and certain of its in- 
teractions or interconnections. 

If we push the idea of things in themselves to the 
ultimate extreme we arrive at the atomistic concep- 
tion of the universe. Atoms are the things in them- 
selves reduced to the point syste?n. If we consider the 
world as a heap of innumerable atoms, we are at a 
loss how to explain the interaction among these 
atoms. The atomist universalises the substance-ab- 
straction and will be disappointed afterwards not to 



28 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

be able to deduce from his universalisation other qual- 
ities which are found in reality, such as the relations 
of things, their interconnections, their spontaneity of 
motion, the life of organised beings, and the mind of 
thinking creatures. 

Ideas are symbols and symbols have a meaning. 
The whole realm of mental representations may be 
viewed in their symbolism or in their significance. 
Considering their symbolism, ideas of things as well 
as of relations are products of the mind; considering 
their meaning, ideas represent realities; in other 
words : their contents or that which they signify is 
real. 

It appears that neither Nominalism nor Realism 
is right ; yet if we stretch them only a little, if we are 
allowed to interpret them in the light of a monistic 
world-conception, both are right. They cease to be 
contradictory and become complementary. Universals 
are real, say the Realists, i. e. the forms and relations 
of things are actualities. Universals are names, say 
the Nominalists, i. e. the relations and forms in which 
we describe the world are mental symbols. 

The Realists had the misfortune to defeat the 
Nominalists entirely, and thus had a chance to insist 
upon being right in every respect. All opposition 
having ceased, the errors of Realism grew in extra- 
ordinary exuberance. Nominalism in the meantime 
raised its head in opposition to the recognised author- 
ity of the Church as well as the schools, slowly yet 



THINGS AND RELATIONS. 2g 

powerfully and irresistibly. The errors and the ty- 
ranny of Realism gave strength to the Nominalistic 
movement which reached its height in Kant's philos- 
ophy. The Realists had gone to the extreme of de- 
claring that universals were things, real substances, 
independent of single and concrete objects, and the 
Nominalists on the other hand, represented by Kant, 
went so far as to declare that all relations, time and 
space included, were mere products of the mind. 

If the relations are mere products of the mind, all 
knowledge being a knowledge of relations, knowledge 
becomes impossible. That last consequence was 
drawn by Kant and is emphatically insisted upon by 
agnosticism. 

There is but one world-conception that can dis- 
pense with these conclusions : it is that view which 
conceives of the All as a whole; and of knowledge as 
a description of its parts, qualities, and relations, 
ever mindful on the one hand that the parts are parts, 
that qualities and relations are certain features only, 
not entire realities, or isolated entities, and that the 
symbols thereof frequently overlap each other ; on 
the other hand, that there is nothing absolute. 1 

There are no things in-themselves, but there are 
forms-in-themselves ; or, in other words, the proper 
sense in which the term " thing-in-itself " can be used 

IThe term " absolute " is for that reason neither meaningless nor redun- 
dant. It denotes a certain method of viewing things, but is not an objective 
quality of things. 



30 THE SURD OF METAPHVSICS. 

denotes that bond of union constituted by all rela- 
tional features which makes the thing what it is. 

The relativity of knowledge, whether we conceive 
of it as expressing the interdependence of the object 
and the subject in general, or as an appreciation of 
the fact that all knowledge gives and can give infor- 
mation of relations only, does not lead to the conclu- 
sion that knowledge is impossible. Relativity is a 
fundamental feature of knowledge, and we shall un- 
derstand that it must be so if we consider that reality 
itself is a great system of relations. 

The interconnection of all things with all things 
appears to be so complete, that if we intended to ex- 
plain or understand one single fact fully and exhaust- 
ively in all its relations, past, present, and future, we 
should be obliged to give a complete description of 
the universe. Stretching the point a little, Tenny- 
son says : 

"Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies ; — 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower. — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. n 

We might address in the same way anything else, 
an atom of hydrogen, a grain of sand as well as the 
sun, the action of a tiny speck of irritable protoplasm 
as well as the soul of man. But of course Tennyson's 



THE IDEAL AND THE SUBJECTIVE. 3 1 

poem must be taken cum grano salts. There is a re- 
verse to the medal which we shall show further on. 1 

THE IDEAL AND THE SUBJECTIVE. 

When we accuse Kant of dualism, 2 we do not mean 
to say that he is a confessed dualist. On the con- 
trary, he becomes dualistic by trying to attain a pure 
monism. He discovers that the formal laws of the 
world exist a priori in the mind, and so he concludes 
that the mind dictates them to the world. His argu- 
ment is based upon the principle of monism ; he de- 
clares that they cannot be indigenous with both, the 
subjective mind and the objective world ; and not 
going to the bottom of the nature of the a priori, his 
theory leads to conclusions which imply dualism. 

Kant's mistake is strange, yet it is based upon a 
very important consideration. Kant was the first to 
understand the sweeping significance of form and of 
formal thought. He defines form correctly as that fea- 
ture which constitutes relations, and when awakened 
from his dogmatic slumber by Hume's scepticism, he 
recognised at once that causation, being the concate- 
nation of cause and effect, belongs to the category of 
formal thought, and thus it is in the same predica- 
ment as mathematics and all the other concepts of 
pure reason. If we doubt causation, we must also 
doubt mathematics. If mathematics is well estab- 
lished, causation too is well established. 

1 See pages 57-58. 2Cf. p. 12. 



32 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

Now Kant regarded all cognitions of pure reason 
as indubitable, for they are a priori, and a priori truths 
are necessary and universal. Thus there is no need 
of doubting the reliability of causation, and Hume's 
scepticism is forever overcome. 

And yet Kant's solution of the difficulty as offered 
in his Critique of Pure Reaso?i is almost as bad as, if 
not worse than, Hume's negativism, for Kant, after 
having proved all formal knowledge to be ideal, by a 
strange confusion of ideality with subjectivity, insisted 
upon the mere subjectivity of time, space, logic, and 
all other purely formal conceptions. It is true, he 
always speaks of ideality, but he means subjectivity, 
and thus renders all objective or scientific philosophy 
illusory. Hence his proposition that things-in-them- 
selves are unknowable. 

Sensations, it is true, considered as pure feelings 
are subjective, but their various forms symbolise the 
things through contact with which they originate, and 
thus they have reference to objective realities : their 
meaning is not subjective but objective. We grant 
that there is a difference between the objective world, 
which appears to us as material, and the subjective 
world, which is sensory, but one feature is common 
to both, viz., the formal or relational. If the formal 
were, as Kant claims, purely subjective, the theory 
that knowledge is impossible would be justified, and 
agnosticism would be firmly established. 

Man's comprehension of facts is, as it were, a 



THE IDEAL AND THE SUBJECTIVE. 33 

bridge between the subjectivity of his soul and the 
objectivity of the world in which he lives. Man's 
knowledge describes the surroundings as the sailor's 
chart depicts the seas on which he sails. Sense-im- 
ages and ideas represent the objects of reality and 
their relations ; and the import and practical useful- 
ness of ideas grows according as they approach the 
ultimate ideal of cognition, which is the comprehen- 
sion of all difference as a difference of form according 
to universal formal laws. 

Kant distinguishes two sources of knowledge, sen- 
sation and pure reason. Sensation in itself is blind, 
and pure reason in itself is empty. Sensations are 
incidental and particular, coming to us singly in a 
haphazard way and without affording any information 
concerning a necessary connexion. However, the 
most striking character of pure reason is the intrinsic 
necessity and universality of its statements ; and Kant 
maintains that from the beginning or a priori pure 
reason lies in the human mind in a state of latency to 
be roused by sense-experience. Pure reason, formal 
thought, and mind thus become inseparable and prac- 
tically identical. Kant argues that, since pure reason 
with its necessity and universality, including the con- 
ceptions of space and time and the categories, is not 
imported into the thinking subject by sensation, it 
must be purely subjective or ideal. It is a form of 
the thinking subject, not of the objective world. 

Now, we do not deny the ideality of pure reason. 



34 



THE SURD OF-METAPHYSICS. 



Our space-conception, our time-conception, our num- 
bers, geometry, logic, and the schemata are ideal ; 
they are systems of pure thought and belong to the 
realm of ideas ; they are mental constructions. In- 
deed, they are purely ideal, for mathematical points, 
geometrical triangles, pure numbers, and logical cate- 
gories do not, as such, exist in reality. At the same 
time they are in Kant's sense of the word "transcen- 
dental." 1 

If I want to know the qualities of oxygen I must 
make experiments and find it out by putting oxygen 
to different tests ; if I want to know what rock-forma- 
tion the Rocky Mountains are I have to travel or in- 
vestigate samples of stone thence taken and so forth ; 
but if we want to know the relation of the circle's cir- 
cumference to its diameter, we must not consult na- 
ture but our own mind. We need not go out of doors ; 
experiments or travels would be useless ; we can pass 
by experience, 2 and have merely to draw the picture 
of a circle on paper, not to measure the two lines on 
the paper, but to assist our imagination in the mental 
construction of a circle for comprehending the laws 



iKant distinguishes "transcendent" and " transcendental," the former 
being that which lies beyond the possibility of experience, the latter that 
which is the condition of experience. The notions of time, space, and any 
other kind of relation (including causality) are transcendental, but not tran- 
scendent. All purely formal ideas are mental tools, for cognition consists 
in tracing samenesses or differences of form, and science would be impos- 
sible without measuring or counting. 

2This passing by of experience, this neglecting sense-information, is 
called by Kant transcending experience; which means an appeal to the 
higher court of the conditions of experience. 



THE IDEAL AND THE SUBJECTIVE. 35 

of circles in general. We decide all arithmetical, 
geometrical, logical relations (viz., purely formal con- 
ditions) in our own mind by referring to our own 
purely mental (i. e., ideal) constructions. Number, 
number-systems, geometrical figures, mathematical 
space, logical arguments, causality (i. e., our concep- 
tion of the necessary connection of events), etc., are 
purely ideal, and since these products of pure reason 
furnish us the means of a methodical investigation, 
they are in Kant's terminology transcendental. 

Yet while all formal thought is purely ideal and 
transcendental, it is by no means purely subjective. 
Kant uses the term ideal in the sense of subjective, 
but the two terms are not identical. The terms are 
similar and may sometimes cover the same ground so 
as to be* used as synonyms and to allow a substitution 
of the one by the other. Nevertheless, they are quite 
disparate ; for instance, the feeling feature of sensa- 
tions is purely subjective, but it is not ideal. 

We define ideal as belonging to, or having refer- 
ence to, the realm of ideas ; subjective as belonging 
to, or having reference to, the realm of the subject. 
While the laws of form (including the laws of time 
and space) are purely ideal constructions, we cannot 
say that time and space are purely subjective. Form 
is a quality of objective existence, and all bodies are 
possessed of definite shapes. Form and matter are 
inseparably connected, and our first notions of pure 
forms are abstractions. Time and space, it is true, 



36 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

are, as Kant argues, inseparably connected with the 
thinking subject, but (and this is important!) only in 
so far as the thinking subject is at the same time an 
object moving about in the objective world as a body 
of a definite shape and with definite whereabouts. 
The ideal constructions of mathematics, arithmetic, 
and logic, are, as we have seen, built of materials 
quarried from the mines of objective existence, the 
knowledge of which has been acquired by experience. 
They convey the most reliable information concerning 
certain universal and therefore very important fea- 
tures of objects and become thus the tools of cogni- 
tion. We must have them ready before we can begin 
a systematical investigation of objects, and in this 
sense alone they are a priori. 

The necessity and universality of a statement, 
which are to Kant the most important evidence of 
subjectivity (or, as he says, "ideality"), indicate, in 
our conception, objectivity. The most elementary 
particle of pure form (if we be permitted to speak of 
form as if it could exist in parts like a material sub- 
stance) contains in mice all the conditions of its com- 
plex potentialities. Given the progression by steps, 
and we have the elements from which by various 
manipulations the whole science of arithmetic with 
its most involved calculations can be derived. Given 
the possibility of motion in all directions, and we can 
by merely remaining consistent build up geometry in 
all its branches with its wonderful harmony and in- 



THE IDEAL AND THE SUBJECTIVE. 37 

trinsic necessity. 1 The same process performed in the 
same way produces the same result, and this is the 
key to the perplexing mystery that, by the help of an 
ideal construction, we gain information about the na- 
ture of objects. The comet does not obey the subjec- 
tive theories of the astronomer's mathematics, but the 
astronomer's mathematics is a mental construction 
from purely formal elements which are universal fea- 
tures of objective existence, applicable to all the anal- 
ogous cases which may take place in any part of the 
universe. The model which we construct corresponds 
to the reality, so that the former affords information 
concerning the latter. Our purely formal systems are 
ideal, but they describe features of objective reality. 
They are transcendental (i. e., indispensable condi- 
tions of experience) only because they describe objec- 
tive features. 

The formulations of the formal laws, as we have 
them in mathematics, logic, and other formal sciences 
are, it is true, purely ideal, they are mental construc- 
tions, but the formal laws themselves are for that 
reason not merely subjective ; they are objective and 
constitute the most important feature of reality, which 
is the immanent and all-pervading deity whose pres- 
ence is so intrinsic that we are unable to think an} 7 
possible kind of existence without it ; and the more 
clearly this feature of reality is mirrored in a sentient 

1 With different assumptions we may build up different geometries. But 
here is not the place to discuss the theories of our modern hypermathemati- 
cians. 



38 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

being where it is called reason, the higher that being 
ranges in the scale of evolution, the more truly it can 
be said to be an image of God, and the more far- 
reaching will be the sway of its dominion over the 
forces of nature. In a word, manhood is the incarna- 
tion of the formal law in its application to the prob- 
lems and duties of practical life. 

No better evidence can be given -in favor of the 
philosophy of science than the truth that there are 
not various reasons different in kind. Neither can 
reason ever be self-contradictory, but is and must 
always remain one and the same, unfailing in its con- 
sistency and harmonious unity. 

The uniqueness of reason does not indicate its 
latency in the subject as subject, but its latency in 
existence as existence. There is no existence bare of 
that formal element which by the same actions would 
not develop always the same result, for it is this 
sameness alone that constitutes the intrinsic necessity 
and universality of all formal laws of thought, called 
reason. This formal feature of existence, which is at 
the bottom of all natural law by making the same 
conditions produce the same results, is the source of 
the cosmic order; it is Lao tze's Tao; the Amitabha 
of the Buddhists ; the Adrishta of the Brahmans ; the 
Christian Logos that was in the beginning and has 
become flesh in the Son of Man. If anything is super- 
natural, it alone is worthy of the name, for it is above 
this real world of ours in so far as it is a condition 



THE ONENESS OF SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY. 39 

that applies to any possible world. If there is any- 
thing not purely subjective, but objective, universal, 
and an indelible feature of reality, it is the eternal 
norm of reason, the intrinsically necessary presence 
of law in any imaginable kind of existence. 1 



THE ONENESS OF SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY. 

The world is not rigid being but activity, not ab- 
solute existence but a system of changing relations, 
not an abstract Sein but a concrete WirkHchkeit — a 
constant working of cause and effect. There is a 
duality in this, but no dualism, for the WirkHchkeit is 
one and undivided. We have two aspects of one and 
and the same reality. 2 

Every relation admits of two standpoints, just as 
does the line AB, which may serve to represent a cer- 
tain and definite relation, is determinable from both 
ends, A as well as B. Let us call A the subject and 
B the object. Neither A nor B is a reality, a whole 
complete WirkHchkeit. A thing in order to be real 
must be active, it must work, it must stand in relation 
to something else. A is a mere mathematical point, 
but AB representing a process does something, it per- 

1 Kant's most important work on the question of ideality is his Prolegom- 
ena which have been published by the author in an English translation and 
with an elucidation of his own standpoint. 

2The German word WirkHchkeit is very expressive. It might be trans- 
lated into English by " workhood," a system that works, viz., a state of effec- 
tiveness. We must bear in mind that the German wirken (to work) is related 
to Wirkung (effect) and implies the effectuality of causation. 



40 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

forms work, it is real. A thing-in-itself, if it could 
exist at all, would be tantamount to non-existence, it 
would represent a Sein without being Wirklichkeit. 
When bearing this in mind, it appears natural that 
the oneness of existence, representable in such rela- 
tions as that of AB= — BA will admit of two stand- 
points, BA representing subjectivity, and AB repre- 
senting objectivity. We can consider the relation of 
the world at large to one special point (which latter 
may in its turn stand for a whole system of relations), 
or vice versa the relation of this point to the world at 
large. The former standpoint is that of the micro- 
cosm, or the soul, the latter that of the macrocosm or 
the universe ; the former results in awareness, the 
latter appears as matter in motion ; the former is sub- 
jectivity, the latter objectivity. 

Reality must not be conceived of as being a com- 
pound of the elements of feeling and of motion, of 
subjectivity and objectivity. Atoms, or whatever the 
ultimate constituents may be called, do not contain 
one-half the potentiality of sentience while the other 
half is freighted with energy. Reality is one through- 
out ; but, being throughout resolvable into relations, 
it will as a matter of course have two sides. What 
these two sides are like can be known through experi- 
ence only, and experience teaches that under certain 
conditions the subjective side develops into feeling 
and consciousness, while the objective side is repre- 
sented in the feeling of conscious beings as motions. 



THE ONENESS OF SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY. 41 

We have, accordingly, the actuality of experience 
with two aspects, the domain of subjectivity, or feel- 
ing, i. e., states of awareness, or consciousness, the 
relation AB, and the objective world, which represents 
itself as matter in motion, the relation BA. 

This view explains the duality of our conception of 
psycho-physical facts, but it is certainly not dualism. 
The duality belongs to our mode of thinking in ab- 
stractions, not to the facts themselves. The facts can 
only be thought of as being one and undivided, and 
no conception can stand that is not monistic. 

The world around us appears to our senses as 
matter moving in space, but the world in us, our soul, 
consists of feelings or states of awareness which rise 
from sensations of all kinds to the higher spheres of 
ideas and abstract thought, arousing in us impulses 
and volitions of all degrees and conscious lucidity. 
Anything perceived in the outside world of matter 
moving in space is called •''object," the inside world 
of feelings is called " subject," and we observe at 
once that our own being appears in our own percep- 
tion as a part of the objective world. We are soul, 
but we appear to ourselves and to other sentient 
beings as a body moving about in space. 

The channels of our notions concerning the world 
of objects are our senses, and comparative physiology 
teaches that they have developed by a gradual adap- 
tation of an undifferentiated sentiency to the various 
actions by which the skin of organised beings is af- 



42 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

fected. The various contacts produce various dis- 
turbances in sentient matter and each kind of dis- 
turbance in the objective body, if strong enough to 
become conscious, is subjectively felt as an analogous 
kind of feeling, touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. 

Here the theory suggests itself that each form of 
objectivity is endowed with an analogous subjectivity, 
so that all the bodies of the same or similar principles 
are possessed of the same or similar souls. The evi- 
dence of this monistic conception is so overwhelming 
that in practical life all living beings accept the theory 
unconsciously and endow all bodies which in their 
actions exhibit purpose with sentient souls according 
to their various organisations. 

We believe that other human beings think as we 
do ; and we attribute sentience to the whole animal 
world. We begin to draw the line at plants and deem 
the mineral world bare of feeling. However, we can- 
not without falling into inconsistency escape the con- 
clusion that other objective existences too, those 
which appear inert and which by scientists are classi- 
fied under the head of inorganic nature, possess a 
proportionate (albeit very low) degree of subjectivity. 

The material of the soul-endowed world of organ- 
ised life is the same as that of the inorganic world ; 
and the latter is the inexhaustible reservoir for the 
sustenance of the former. Life increases by spon- 
taneous growth under still unknown conditions by 
transforming inanimate nature into living structures. 



THE ONENESS OF SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY. 43 

The carbon dioxide of the air, the water of the soil, 
and other elements form the starch in the wheat ; the 
wheat is baked into bread, and bread sustains the life 
of man. Thus the particles of inorganic substances 
are transformed into organised beings that feel and 
think and act. A molecule of oxygen that is obviously 
without a soul is now inhaled with the barren air into 
the lungs of a man and may soon become an integral 
part of the brain process in which some great idea of 
far-reaching consequences finds its incarnation. 

The lowest kind of subjectivity which 'must be 
supposed to be present in the gravitating stone or in 
the chemical action of the elements is, so far as we 
can judge, not sentient, but contains in an unorgan- 
ised state the elements of sentiency; and thus we be- 
lieve that inorganic nature, although it does not feel, 
is yet endowed with the potentiality of feeling. 

We conceive the world as an immeasurably great 
system of interactions, and say that every action is 
subjectively a feeling or an element of feeling and ob- 
jectively a motion ; an idea which I think is subjec- 
tively a state of awareness and objectively a brain- 
motion. The idea itself belongs to the realm of pure 
form. The feeling and the motion are the actualisa- 
tion of the idea and represent two aspects of one and 
the same fact. 

Subjectivity and objectivity are terms that express 
relations and not things-in-themselves. There are, 
however, philosophers who show great grief unless 



44 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

either the subjectivity of being, or the objectivity of 
being, or the unities in which things or personalities 
are gathered up, are considered as things-in-them- 
selves. All those features of reality which appear to 
their conception unexplainable, such as the relations 
that obtain among things and especially the thoughts 
of thinking beings, are supposed to be the effects of 
some transcendental entity, of a thing-in-itself. And 
if a philosophy denies the existence of transcendental- 
istic thought-entities or of any such things-in-them- 
selves, which serve to them as cement to combine the 
disjecta membra of their world- conception, it is gene- 
rally declared to lead straight on to nihilism — not be- 
cause the world itself but because their world-system 
would thereby be annihilated. 

All things that exist, if considered as separate 
things, will pass away ; but if considered as parts of 
the all-existence of reality, they are eternal. In fact 
things are not separate things, in the sense of isolated-, 
absolute, or abstract beings, although we may speak 
of them as such for our ephemeral purposes. All 
things that exist, the human soul included, are and 
will remain parts of the One and All. 

This destroys the individuality both of things and 
of the soul as little as a brick ceases to be a brick be- 
cause it serves its part in the building of a dome. 
The soul of a man, if his life be well spent, is not an- 
nihilated in death but has been incorporated as a living 
factor into the grander life of humanity. It continues 



THE REALITY OF THE OBJECTIVE WORLD. 45 

to live and marches on in the general progress of the 
race. 

We are parts of a great whole now, and we shall 
remain parts of the same great whole forever. We 
have never been and shall never be transcendental 
selfhoods or metaphysical egos, or any kind of things- 
in-themselves. Our personality is real life, it is actual 
being. As such it is bound up in the universal life of 
the One and All and no particle of it will be lost. We 
need not fear death, for the air we breathe is im- 
mortality. 

THE REALITY OF THE OBJECTIVE WORLD. 

There are idealists, so called (e. g., Schopenhauer), 
who look upon the objective world as purely ideal and 
some go so far as to deny the reality of the objective 
world. The question as to the reality of the outer 
world is a wrongly formulated problem, which to show 
its futility might be formulated in the words, "Is 
reality real?" The term "reality" has reference to 
the condition under which certain sensations originate. 
The questions as to the uniformity of the laws of real- 
ity and as to its attributes, whether it is intrinsically 
material, or spatial, or spiritual, has nothing directly 
to do with the problem of the outer world, and is of a 
more complicated nature. The space-world of our 
imagination is our method of representing reality; it 
is that which is meant when a sentient being, by a re- 
sistance of some kind, feels its own limitation. There 



46 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

is neither outerness nor innerness of the world, but 
the outer and the inner are mere aspects. A fraction 
of existence, called A, if viewed from A is called the 
soul aspect or innerness; if viewed from some other 
standpoint, say from B, it is called body or outerness. 
The question is not whether reality is real, but, What 
is the proper definition of reality? 

Reality is a synonym of objectivity. In the wider 
sense of the term, reality is identical with existence 
and thus we may say that our feelings and ideas are 
real. But in its original and etymological meaning 
reality means thingishness, and in this narrower sense 
it denotes the actuality of objective existence. 

Our own existence, so far as we are aware of it, 
consists of feelings and we call it subjective ; but the 
impacts, which are none of our own doings but are 
independent of ourselves, represent the objective ele- 
ment. The existence of these impacts is as undubit- 
able as are our feelings, and thus to doubt their real- 
ity is as irrational as to doubt our own existence. 

The problem as to the reality of the objective 
world should not be confused with the question 
whether our mode of representing the objective world 
is absolutely correct. The fact is, we interpret impacts 
as effects of objects, and objects are regarded as ex- 
isting in time and space. Whether our view of cor- 
poreality is the proper mode of thinking bodies, 
whether our space and time conceptions cover all the 
characteristics of objective space and time, is a ques- 



THE REALITY OF THE OBJECTIVE WORLD. 47 

tion of a radically different order which does not ad- 
mit of an easy answer, because philosophy and science 
are still engaged in purifying our notions of reality. 

Every sensation leaves (as we learn from phys- 
iology) in the sentient substance a vestige which is 
preserved, and which when irritated causes a repeti- 
tion of the original feeling — a condition which is called 
memory. When another sensation of the same kind 
as the first one takes place in the same sentient sub- 
stance, it enters the memory vestige of its predecessor 
and revives it. This act is, according to the late Ro- 
manes, most appropriately called reception, and the 
second sensation thus becomes a recept. By recep- 
tion a new psychic phenomenon is created, for the 
sameness of the two sensations (be it ever so dimly) 
begins to be perceived ; it becomes a percept which 
indicates the presence of the conditions of a sensa- 
tion. This additional element, the representativeness 
or symbolic nature of sensations, is the life of the 
soul. Now when we speak of reality we mean facts, 
viz., sensations, i. e. , immediately given facts, or such 
conditions as by resistance will directly or indirectly 
produce sensations ; and when we speak of something 
as being "unreal," we mean that the meaning of some 
psychical symbol, of a sensation, or of an idea, is the 
product of a fallacy. The sensation of a red object 
leaves a blue after-image. The red-sensation is real, 
and the blue-sensation of the after-image is real, for 
both are immediately given facts. The percept of a 



48 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

red body is also real, for it means that conditions exist 
which by contact, viz., through resistance of some 
kind, will produce certain other sensations. When 
the red object is touched, the anticipation is verified, 
or, as we say, "realised"; but when attempts are 
made to grasp the blue object, our anticipation is de- 
luded and there are no such conditions as were sup- 
posed to exist : in brief, the blue object is unreal. 
Bodily existence, i. e., matter moving in space, or 
outerness, is the mode by which reality or resistance 
is represented. Bodily existence, or matter moving 
in space, accordingly, is not the real world, but real- 
ity as it appears to sentiency ; it is one aspect only 
which may be called the outerness of being. 

We can deny that things are such as are commonly 
pictured in our imagination, and that their ultimate 
constitution is not what is popularly conceived, but to 
deny the reality of the objective world is a self-contra- 
dictory statement. Reality is a synonym of objectiv- 
ity, and objectivity denotes that quality of our experi- 
ence which is independent of our own thinking and 
presents itself as the causative factors of sensation, 
the combinations of which are pictured as things. 1 

KNOWLEDGE AS DESCRIPTION. 
Knowledge is description, and explanations are 
descriptions which show that some definite and un- 
usual case is due to definite and unusual conditions 

1 See also the author's article "The Nature of Mind and the Meaning of 
Reality," Monist, II., pp. 434-437. 



KNOWLEDGE AS DESCRIPTION. 49 

and can be subsumed with other cases under a com- 
mon general formula. 

Explanations, however, can be satisfactory only 
when the descriptions of phenomena are reduced to 
terms of form, while the innermost nature of reality 
in general is supposed to be and to remain the same 
all through. 

Sensations are the basis of all knowledge ; they 
picture our surroundings in the feelings which the 
various objects in various ways, according to their na- 
ture, rouse by their contact with the sentient organ- 
ism. Sensations are not the things pictured in them, 
nor do they inform us of the nature of things-in-them- 
selves, they only represent the things so as to show 
which is which. Representativeness is the character- 
istic feature of the soul and it is the root from which 
cognition grows. 

Wherever existence has developed into a sentient 
organism, every impression which is felt as a peculiar 
sensation leaves a trace, the form of which is pre- 
served in the flux of organised life ; and when another 
impression of the same kind creates another corre- 
spondent sensation, it is transmitted to the memory 
trace of its predecessor which is thereby revived and 
is felt to be the same. Thus this feeling naturally 
comes to indicate the presence of the same object, 
whatever it be, and sensations naturally develop into 
symbols or signs representing the objects of contact 
and processes that take place in the objective world. 



50 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

The simplest kind of cognition is perception ; it is 
the picturing of objects in their analogous forms of 
feeling, so that their sameness or the similarity of a 
new sensation with former sensations is perceived, or, 
as we correctly say, re-cognised. If the picturing is 
done in words, we call it "description." 

Cognition in its primitive form is a reference of 
the new sensation to an old one, into whose memory- 
trace it fits ; it is the reduction of the unknown to the 
known ; a subsumption of the unfamiliar under a class 
of former experiences which are familiar. The char- 
acteristic feature of "mind" consists in this that the 
objects of the world are mirrored in sentient images. 
The word idea means "picture." 

Explanation is a more complex kind of descrip- 
tion. It is a making plain, viz., a simplification, a 
description laying bare intricate complications, so that 
the changes of a process can be traced in all their de- 
tails. 1 

The main method of explaining natural events is by 
tracing in them the concatenation of cause and effect. 

Natural science has found it convenient of late to 
express the causal law as a preservation of matter 
and energy. The law of the preservation of matter 



1 There are two views as to the nature of explanation which we may call 
the metaphysical and the scientific, or the dualistic and the monistic views. 
Compare the chapter on Explanation in The Monist, Vol. Ill , No. 4, p. 585 
et seq. Compare also Professor Boltzmann's articles on " The Recent De- 
velopment of Method in Theoretical Physics," in The Monist, Vol. XL, No. 2, 
pp. 226-257; and " On the Necessity of Atomic Theories in Physics," in The 
Mouist, Vol. XII., No. 1, pp. 65-97. 



KNOWLEDGE AS DESCRIPTION. 5 1 

and energy is, closely considered and in spite of its 
formulation in a positive assertion, a negative state- 
ment : it means that matter and energy are neither 
increased nor diminished; and its positive counter- 
formula would be: "all change is purely change of 
form; it is not a change of the innermost nature of 
reality; or, briefly, causation is transformation." The 
terms, "matter "and "energy, "are abstractions which 
denote two general qualities, the identity of which can 
be traced in the various transformations of all phe- 
nomena ; they represent the universal features of that 
which is real, not entities, not substances in the sense 
of independent existences, not things-in-themselves. 
We have to add that matter in this connection is in- 
tended to mean mass, for the law of the preservation 
of matter does not preclude the production of matter 
from ether by condensation, or any other procreation 
of the material universe from ether, or perhaps even 
of ether from a more rarefied world-substance — in 
brief, of sense-perceptible reality from what we might 
call potential reality. 

A description of two or several different kinds of 
phenomena in one comprehensive formula, so as to 
exhibit their essential identity, showing that their dif- 
ference is due to a difference of form, resulting from 
different conditions conformably to the universal laws 
of form, is called comprehension ; and the most im- 
portant advantage of comprehension is the simplicity 



52 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

which in this way explanations or systematic descrip- 
tions acquire. 1 

Causation explains the changes of form but never 
the existence of either matter or energy. 

THE METAPHYSICAL x NOT UNKNOWN. 

Now the question arises : Is not what we here call 
"the innermost nature of reality" the surd, which lies 
without the pale of science, and whether or not we 
call it metaphysical, will always remain unexplained? 

If subject and object are two aspects of one and 
the same reality, does not reality itself remain un- 
known and unexplained? 

No ! Reality does not remain unexplained, for it is 
the very material on which and with which our cogni- 
tion is written; it is the best-known reality and most 
familiar of all facts, for it is the innermost nature of 
our own being. It is both the slate and the slate- 
pencil which in their interaction produce the writing, 
called the soul. 

The importance of a comprehension of the inner- 
most nature of being (which we call subjectivity) can- 
not be exaggerated as the basis of all psychical life; 
but as a factor in the comprehension of the objective 
world it has been greatly misunderstood. It is fre- 
quently regarded as the object of metaphysics, and 
according to a fashionable mysticism is claimed to be 
incomprehensible, and is supposed to represent the 

1 Ernst Mach speaks in this sense of the economy of thought. 



THE METAPHYSICAL X NOT UNKNOWN. 53 

surd of existence and to be the unsolved x of meta- 
physics. If this surd could be known, so the argu- 
ment commonly runs, we should have the key to all 
the riddles of the universe. Its comprehension is 
regarded as a kind of philosopher's stone, and if a 
scientist could find the value of the metaphysical x, 
he would be in possession of the solution of all prob- 
lems. But this is a great error and an exaggeration 
of the significance of subjectivity in the economy of 
cognition. 

A misconception of that feature of existence which 
in living animal substance becomes feeling and in man 
blazes forth as consciousness, will throw all thought 
into confusion, but a right conception of it does not 
involve the advantage that in the future we can dis- 
pense with the drudgery of scientific investigation, as 
though the acquisition of further knowledge had be- 
come redundant. Faust's hope of opening channels 
of wisdom by magic is a mistake. The world-problem 
does not lie in the innermost kernel of existence, the 
subjectivity of the soul, which is sometimes called the 
metaphysical, but it reveals itself in objective nature. 
There it must be sought, and there alone it can be 
found. He who does not find the correct solution 
should find fault, not with reality, but with himself. 

The world is not unintelligible, but he who is un- 
able to decipher its wonderful cryptography is un- 
intelligent. Faust is quite conscious of the fact that 



54 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

his inability to acquire genuine knowledge is his own 
fault. He says : 

' ' The spirit- world no closures fasten ; 
Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead. 
Disciple up ! Untiring hasten 

To bathe thy breast in morning-red." 

["Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen : 
Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt. 
Auf, bade, Schiiler, unverdrossen 
Die ird'sche Brust im Morgenroth."] 

The elements of subjectivity, being, as it were, 
the substance out of which the soul has been fash- 
ioned, are the same in man as in the dust that is trod- 
den under foot. And Christ's words are literally true 
when he says: "God is able of these stones to raise 
up children unto Abraham." 

The metaphysical nucleus of reality, the in-itself- 
ness of things and of ourselves (viz., subjectivity in 
general and in its elementary simplicity) does not 
contain the key to the problems either of science or 
philosophy. The identity which we must attribute to 
its nature in all its elementary forms, renders it unim- 
portant as a factor in explanation. The diversity, 
however, which it exhibits in its various combinations, 
— now as phenomena of inorganic nature, now again as 
the irritability of a plant, and here in us as the soul 
of a rational being, — depends upon the forms which it 
assumes. These forms correspond to the forms of 



THE METAPHYSICAL X NOT UNKNOWN. 55 

their objective manifestations which are perceivable; 
viz., they become tangible, visible, and observable in 
the objective world. 

The parallelism 1 of subjectivity and objectivity 
teaches us that the several things-in-themselves, as 
the inner aspects of various objects, must be regarded 
as much combinations of the elements of the meta- 
physical essence of all reality as the objects under our 
observation appear to our senses compounds of mate- 
rial elements. Considered in themselves, they are 
the Platonic ideas, or prototypes of things, and we 
call them "forms-in-themselves." 

A harmonious world-conception is established if 
we can assign to the subject its proper place in the 
domain of objective existence ; and if the several 
forms of objective existence can in their turn be de- 
scribed in terms known to the thinking subject. The 
most important part of the explanation must be done 
by mutual reference. It is by comparing and con- 
trasting, by contemplating from opposite standpoints, 
keeping in view the essential and omitting the acci- 

1 Parallelism is not a good name ; for there are not two things parallel, 
but there is one thing having two different aspects. Neither of these two 
aspects exists in itself and thus they are like two sides of a curve, radically 
disparate yet analogous in their details. 

Our monism is neither materialistic nor spiritualistic. We claim that 
there is neither matter in itself nor spirit in itself. All matter contains the 
potentiality of spirit and all spirit manifests itself in bodily appearance. Yet 
we do not say that inorganic nature contains mind. Mind originates in and 
with the rise of organised forms. For details of this important proDlem see 
the author's article " Panpsychism and Panbiotism" (in The Monist,Xo\. III., 
pp. 234-257) which is a discussion of Haeckel's, Edison's, and Professor Ro- 
manes's theories of panpsychism, containing an unabbreviated account of 
Edison's view of the subject. 



56 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

dental, by seeing the differences without losing sight 
of the ultimate unity, that we finally arrive at a phi- 
losophy which (however defective it may be in de- 
tails) will be satisfactory in its general plan. All we 
can expect is a correct world-picture that will serve 
the sailors on the ocean of life as a reliable chart for 
orientation and as a mariner's compass for a guide. 

THE METAPHYSICAL SURD ELIMINATED. 

By Metaphysics is originally understood a discus- 
sion of the ultimate principles of philosophic thought, 
but since the believers in things-in-themselves regard 
their speculations of these unknowable quantities as 
the deepest wisdom attainable, metaphysics has been 
identified with their revelations concerning the surd 
of philosophy. Metaphysics in the former sense (al- 
though it had better be called philosophy) is a discus- 
sion of the ultimate principles of philosophic thought, 
and it will remain forever a respectable science. It 
deals with the methods of thinking and investigating, 
elucidating the fundamental notions of science, the 
nature of object and subject, the function of formal 
thought and its relation to form (as an objective fac- 
tor), the import of causation, etc., etc. But meta- 
physics in the latter sense is based upon the assump- 
tion that the idea of things-in-themselves is a justified 
notion and that it is not sufficient to analyse and clas- 
sify the several elements of our experience, and that 



THE METAPHYSICAL SURD ELIMINATED. 57 

in order to comprehend the world we must transcend 
our experience and introduce an hypothetical quantity 
which is the metaphysical x. In this sense meta- 
physics is of a doubtful nature and has caused many 
thoughtful scientists to turn their back upon it and 
assume what may with Ernst Mach be called an "anti- 
metaphysical" attitude. 

The foregoing chapters are evidence of the anti- 
metaphysical character of the author's philosophy. It 
is his ambition to eliminate from philosophy the surd 
of metaphysics. But while he proposes to show that 
there is no reason to believe in the objective existence 
of any irrational quantity, he does not claim to have 
solved all the problems of the world. He has only 
solved one problem of general application and thus 
removed an obstruction to the progress of philosoph- 
ical thought. 

It is a vice of the old metaphysical method to look 
for the master-key of knowledge in some universal 
proposition that would serve as a formula for all de- 
tail problems. The idea that the riddle of the uni- 
verse lies in one universal conception is widely spread. 
It finds expression in such sentences, frequently in- 
serted even in text-book's, that while we know what 
gold, lead, wood, and other substances are, we are 
perfectly ignorant of the nature of matter. Why? If 
we know what gold, lead, wood, etc., are, we know 
also what matter is. The idea of matter is the gene- 
ralisation of all substance; it is simpler than the idea 



58 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

of any single substance. For we must bear in mind 
that the wider the extent of an idea is, the poorer 
must be its content ; and the widest generalisations 
are the emptiest of real concrete information. The 
metaphysical philosopher, however, having reified or 
hypostatised his words, looks upon matter, notas a 
mere generalisation of all substances, but as a real 
entity. He thinks of it as containing in ?iuce all the 
qualities of the material world, and thus the impor- 
tance of the term is inflated beyond measure. 

The removal of the surd in metaphysics only dis- 
poses of a source of error and will thus prove helpful 
in many respects, to philosophers as well as to scien- 
tists, but we must not expect more of it. The advan- 
tages of clear thought are sufficiently great and can 
not be exaggerated. So there is no need of repeating 
the old mistake of Faust who hoped to gain a com- 
prehension of the world with all the mysteries of 
heaven and earth at one fell stroke by entering into 
nature's holy of holies and there grasping the inner- 
most secret of existence. 



The wealth of the world is such that its problems 
can never be exhausted. Every single problem, if it 
is legitimate and rightly formulated, can be solved, 
but with the growing expanse of our experience new 
problems arise and keep thought moving. Further, 
when we endeavor to reconstruct the conditions of 



THE METAPHYSICAL SURD ELIMINATED. 59 

objective being in subjective thought, we find the 
methods of the latter frequently incommensurate to 
do justice to the former. Thus we can in arithmetical 
figures only approximate the relation between the 
diameter and the circumference of a circle, but for 
that reason the relation itself is definite and perfectly 
rational. We can construct it geometrically and its 
actuality is traceable in the mathematical relations, 
e. g., of the starry heavens, for the calculation of 
which the number ir is indispensable. 

There is a function in mathematics which cannot 
be executed; it is the extraction of the root — 2, and 
we call it irrational (i. e., 1 /— 2). But the name is ill 
chosen, for V — 2 is not irrational in the sense of be- 
ing contrary to reason ; it ought to be called the un- 
realisable, or irreducible. It is a function that cannot 
be expressed in numbers and so remains a surd — a 
thing that is deaf to our questions — a quantity that 
admits of no further treatment. 

Surd is not absurd and the so-called irrational is 
not truly irrational. It is simply an irreducible quan- 
tity, and the fact that it is irreducible is due to the 
circumstance that if we try to reduce it we become 
involved in contradictions. So we must leave it alone 
as impossible. In the objective world there are con- 
flicts and collisions, but always actualities, never im- 
possibilities, and the laws of nature may exhibit con- 
trasts but never contradictions. There is no surd in 
reality, and the surd of things-in-themselves which 



60 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

presents itself as the irrational quantity in metaphys- 
ics is solely due to a faulty method of thinking. 



Summa summarum : The source of knowledge is 
inner as well as outer experience, observation as well 
as introspection, but metaphysics is of do avail. 
Metaphysical philosophies must give way to the only 
true philosophy, — which is the philosophy of science. 

The peculiar nature and the worth of man lies not 
in what metaphysicians call the thing-in-itself — grant- 
ing here the propriety of the term, — it lies not in the 
presence of any metaphysical essence, not in the sub- 
jectivity of his existence, but in the truth of the im- 
ages and ideas of which his soul consists. Man's soul 
is a description of reality sub specie aeterni; it is an 
image of God. God enters, as it were, in parts with 
every sense-impression into sentient creatures, and 
his likeness grows in clearness as the traces thus pro- 
duced in living feelings reconstruct the World-Logos, 
which in man's soul appears as the divine spark called 
Reason. The progress of man's comprehension of 
natural phenomena, revealing the cosmic order of the 
universe and teaching the right conduct in life, is the 
history of God's revelation. 

PHILOSOPHY DEFINED. 

But what becomes of philosophy if metaphysics is 
gone? Is philosophy merely (as it was to Auguste 



PHILOSOPHY DEFINED. 6l 

Comte) the sum-total of scientific knowledge, or has 
it still a province of its own? 

Philosophy has, indeed, a province of its own, the 
limits of which are quite well defined. Philosophy is 
engaged with those inquiries which, according to their 
nature, are common to all sciences. An investigation 
of the constituents of water belongs to the domain of 
a special science called chemistry. But a considera- 
tion of the methods of science concerning the com- 
prehension or explanation or systematisation of facts 
belongs to the department of philosophy. Yet, for 
that reason, philosophy, as we understand it, is not 
superscientific, but is a science among the sciences. 
And there are three great departments in philosophy: 

First, philosophy is above all methodology. It has 
to investigate the basis of all the sciences ; it has to 
define and explain the scientific methods which the 
scientist instinctively employs as tools of scientific in- 
quiry. We need an elucidation of such ideas as causa- 
tion, natural law, cognition, experience, reason, and 
truth. Further we must know how cognition orig- 
inates, and thus the science of method includes logic, 
propaedeutics, and epistemology. 

Secondly, philosophy must be systematology. From 
the data furnished by the most matured results of the 
various sciences philosophy constructs, with the help 
of the best scientific methods accessible, a world-con- 
ception which must be at once consistent and syste- 
matic. The tendency to construct philosophical sys- 



62 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

terns is legitimate; but there has been much system- 
building in Germany during the nineteenth century 
that was wrong, because it was mere speculation and 
purely fictitious. A philosophical system should be 
a synopsis of the significant features of the sciences 
and not an air-castle of pure thought. 

The hierarchy of the sciences which plays a prom- 
inent part in Comte's philosophy belongs to the de- 
partment of systematology. 

And, thirdly, philosophy has to apply the results 
of this systematised world-conception to a practical 
life. It must be what Kant calls world-wisdom. Phi- 
losophy must teach man his place in nature. It must 
enable him to strike the proper attitude in life. It 
must attune our souls to the harmony of the whole of 
which we are a part, and advise us as to the right con- 
duct in life. This is philosophy as Socrates conceived 
it, viz., ethics in the broadest sense of the word. 

Philosophy as world wisdom frequently supplies 
the remaining branches in an abbreviated form as 
mysticism, and whether or not mysticism is legitimate 
depends upon the spirit of its ethical applications. 

Philosophy as here conceived may be called "the 
philosophy of science," because it recognises the im- 
portance of defining philosophy as the science of sci- 
ence, and insists that its methods and modes of ope- 
ration are in principle not different from the other 
sciences. Philosophical cognition is essentially the 
same as scientific cognition. 



PHILOSOPHY DEFINED. 63 

Having outlined our own position, we propose 
now to discuss the role played by the metaphysical x 
in the systems of modern thinkers and will then con- 
clude our disquisition with an elucidation of the soul 
question; for here the idea of things-in-themselves 
finds a practical application, and the old schools are 
so accustomed to regarding the soul as a thing-in- 
itself that they accuse modern psychology of being a 
psychology without a soul. 



THE METAPHYSICAL RESIDUE IN 

THE SYSTEMS OF MODERN 

THINKERS. 

METAPHYSICISM (viz., the belief in things-in- 
themselves, as a surd of existence or an irredu- 
cible x of some kind) changes with the growth of sci- 
entific thought slowly but surely into a systematic 
world-conception based upon a critical observation of 
facts, which may be called monism or positivism, or 
the Philosophy of Science 1 ; and the period of transi- 
tion will naturally be agnostic, viz., a philosophy 
which leaves metaphysics alone and declares the 
problems of metaphysics to lie beyond the ken of 
man. Agnosticism neither affirms nor denies the 
speculations concerning God, soul, and world. 

The term agnosticism was coined by Huxley, but it 
will be seen that the inventor of agnosticism (as the 
philosophy of a suspension of judgment) was Auguste 
Comte, whose philosophy goes under the name of 
positivism, which (in contrast to genuine positivism) 
we call French positivism. 

1A most appropriate title for the author's conception would be " the phi- 
losophy of form"; for it is by comprehending the nature of form and the 
purely formal in both domains, — subjective thought and objective reality, 
and their interrelation,— that we arrive at an explanation of the several prob- 
lems of philosophy. 



FRENCH POSITIVISM. 65 



FRENCH POSITIVISM REPRESENTED BY COMTE AND 
LITTRE. 

Auguste Comte opposes Kant's metaphysicism 
and attempts to replace it by the philosophy of posi- 
tivism, but far from solving, or even attempting to 
solve, the metaphysical question, he proposes to 
ignore it. He made it a matter of principle to sus- 
pend his opinion on the most fundamental philosoph- 
ical problems, because he regarded them as inaccess- 
ible and unsolvable. Comte accordingly is a meta- 
physical philosopher without either knowing or con- 
ceding the fact. He calls himself a positivist, but he 
is an agnostic, and thus it happens that the terms 
positivism and agnosticism are actually identified in 
many quarters, although agnosticism, the philosophy 
of nescience and negation, is practically the opposite 
to true positivism, which is, or ought to be, the phi- 
losophy of science. 

Comte's doctrine of the three stages of knowledge, 
viz., the theological, metaphysical, and positive stages, 
appears to me of less importance. The doctrine of 
the three stages is at the same time not properly a 
Comtean idea ; *Comte adopted it from Turgot, the 
great statesman, and one of the greatest men, as a 
thinker and also as a character, that ever lived, and 
who is too little appreciated as such. 

The main doctrine of Comte's positivism is the 



66 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

doctrine that first and final cause cannot be known, 
and we must abandon our search for them ; that hu- 
man knowledge is limited to the middle, while the 
two ends are inaccessible. These insoluble questions, 
he declares, have made no progress from the begin- 
ning. 

Mr. Lewes in his book Comte's Philosophy of the 
Sciences expresses his assent in the following words 
(P- 3i): 

"Our province is to study her [nature's] laws, to trace her 
processes, and, thankful that we can so far penetrate the divine 
significance of the universe, be content — as Locke wisely and mod- 
estly says — to sit down in quiet ignorance of all tratiscendent 
subjects." 

This idea is the basis of his belief in the unknow- 
able, and the works of all followers of Comte's philos- 
ophy abound in expressions that concerning the main 
problems of life "the positive philosophy will neither 
assert nor deny anything." 

Littre concludes the last article of his volume La 
Science with the following words : 

"The domain that lies beyond refers to the things that cannot 
be known. Positive science proposes neither to deny nor to affirm 
them. In a word, it does not know the Unknowable, but it recog- 
nises its existence. This is the highest philosophy. To go beyond 
is chimerical, to go not so far is to miss the mark." 1 

lLe domaine ulterieur est celui des choses qui ne peuvent pas etre con- 
nues. La science positive professes de n'y rien nier, de n'y rien affirmer : en 
un mot, elle ne connait pas l'inconnais?able, mais elle en constate 1'exis- 
tence. La est la philosophic supreme; aller plus loin est chimerique, aller 
moin loin est deserter notre destinee. 



FRENCH POSITIVISM. 67 

Now I must object to Comte's view of causation 
when he refers to first and final causes. Causation is 
transformation and causality is the formula under 
which we comprehend the changes of matter and 
energy that take place. The expressions first and 
final causes are misnomers. 1 First cause is either the 
starting-point of a series of some longer chain of causes 
and effects, or it means (as the term is generally used, 
not to say misused) the last ground or reason, i. e., 
the answer given to the ultimate question why? — 
which is the most general raison d'etre that would ex- 
plain and contain all the other and less general rat- 
sons d'etre regarding the nature of existence. The 
term final cause, again, means either the last cause in 
a series of causes or (and so it is generally used) it is 
a misnomer for purpose ; and the final cause supposed 
to be inaccessible to human comprehension is the pur- 
pose of the existence of the world at large. I object 
to the doctrine that there are three kinds of causes. 
There is one kind of causality only, and the causes of 
this causality in all the causal processes with which 
we are confronted are perfect^ intelligible. 

The problem of the first cause of the origin of our 
world, viz., the solar system and the milky wa} 7 , was 
attacked first by Kant and later by Laplace, and the 
latter, without knowing of Kant's solution, solved it 
in the main in the same way. All recent investigations 

1 Compare the author's Fundamental Problems and his Primer of Philoso- 
phy, the chapters on "The Problem of Causality." 



68 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

stand upon this Kant-Laplace hypothesis so called, 
having added corrections only as to details. Shall we 
declare that these labors are vain and gratuitous efforts 
of vague speculation? Littre, Comte's greatest dis- 
ciple, says, with reference to such speculations, con- 
cerning the past and future states of the world {le 
monde') : 

"La dissemination primordiale de la matiere qui devait le 
composer, la dissemination future de la matiere qui le compose, 
depassent toute experience, depassent toute conjecture." 

Yet is not the problem as to the origin of the 
world at large, why matter and energy exist at all, in- 
solvable? Littre says that the positive cosmogonies, 
such as the doctrine of evolution, do not touch the ab- 
solute ; they have nothing to do with first and final 
causes. He says : 

" Les cosmogonies positives la [i. e., la place des cosmogonies 
religieuses] remplissent, non pas qu'elles aient la pretention ni le 
pouvoir de penetrer dans l'absolu et d'embrasser les causes pre- 
mieres et finales " — Loc. cit., p. 560. 

That kind of causality which is sometimes called 
"ontological," having reference to the existence, not 
of single things as transformations from other things, 
but of the world at large, and formulated in such ques- 
tions as how did the universe itself, the world as a 
whole, originate, is properly speaking no causality, it 
is not a question concerning a cause, but concerning 
a raison d'etre. However without haggling about the 
words cause and raison d'etre, this ontological causal- 



FRENCH POSITIVISM. 69 

ity so called is by no means beyond human compre- 
hension. The ontological question has found a very 
definite answer in the formulation of the law of the 
conservation of matter and energy, which declares 
that existence at large did not originate; the total 
amount of matter as well as of energy existed always 
and will exist always. It has not been created ; it is 
uncreatable and indestructible; it is eternal. 1 

Littre is quite explicit in declaring that the posi- 
tive philosophy eschews all theological and metaphys- 
ical problems. It is neither atheistic nor theistic, and 
does not side with either materialism or spiritualism. 
He says : 

" Ni spiritualiste, ni materialiste, la philosophie positive ecarte 
de la science generale les debats que la science particuliere a depuis 
longtemps et a son grand profit rejetes " — Preface d'un disciple in 
Comte's Course de Phil, fios., p. vxvii. 

Littre characterises as the main object of the pos- 
itive philosophy, "to give to philosophy the positive 
method of the sciences, to the sciences the idea of 
the unity of philosophy." He says : 

' 'Ainsi fut accompli ce qu'on doit appeler l'ceuvre philosophique 
du dix-neuvieme siecle, donner a. la philosophie la methode posi- 
tive des sciences, aux sciences l'idee d'ensemble de la philosophie." 
Preface, p. viii. 

I am in perfect agreement with Littre* that to give 
to philosophy the positive method of science is the 

1 By matter is here meant the material of which the world consists; but 
not matter in contrast with and to the exclusion of ether, or whatever the ma- 
terial be called from which by condensation the visible world may have risen. 



70 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

object of positivism ; but, if I understand Littre cor- 
rectly, I disagree with him in his conception of the 
positive method. He limits the positive method to 
what he calls "experience," and excludes every no- 
tion of the a priori. Littre" apparently misunderstood 
the proper meaning of Kant's idea of the a priori, for 
he used as a matter of course the a priori method 
wherever it was indispensable, as for instance in math- 
ematics and in the application of mathematics. 

The problem of the a priori reasoning is the ques- 
tion, "Why can we know certain things before we 
have tested them by experiment ? Man has not ar- 
rived by sense-experience, but by pure reasoning, at 
the conclusion that the sum of the angles of every 
plane triangle is 180 degrees. How is he justified in 
declaring a priori that the angles of a certain plane 
triangle make up 180 degrees, although he has not 
measured them?" 

Littre has, so far as I know, never discussed the 
problem of apriority and necessity. He has simply 
rejected the idea of the a priori as the method of a 
false metaphysics, which is incompatible with the a 
posteriori method of positive science. 

Littre was prejudiced against the a priori, and his 
prejudice induced him to underrate its importance. 
He said, for instance : 

"If it [thought] attempts to go out metaphysically into space, 
it is reduced to combining subjectively its own elements, turns in 
a circle without issue and falls back upon itself." 



FRENCH POSITIVISM. 7l 

The a priori method of thought subjectively com- 
bining its own elements, is by no means a turning in 
a circle without issue so that in the end it will fall 
back upon itself. The a priori method of thought 
subjectively combining its own elements is employed 
by arithmetic, mathematics, and logic, and we are 
confronted with the astonishing fact that rules, or 
formulas, or calculations, which were made by pure 
thought subjectively combining its own elements, are 
applicable and hold good as reliable guides in our ex- 
periments. If there were no a priori, how could we 
predict or, what is more important still, how could we 
predetermine the course of nature? The a priori has 
been wrongly employed by the so-called metaphysical 
philosophers to give us information about the sub- 
stance and essence of the world. But the misapplica- 
tion of the a priori is no reason for denouncing it as 
radically wrong. 

The existence of the a priori is an undeniable fact. 
Kant was right in recognising it in its sweeping im- 
portance, yet he was wrong in his interpretation of 
the a priori, which according to his transcendentalism 
was based exclusively upon a peculiarity of the mind 
and not upon the nature of things. The positivists in 
France not only objected to the wrong interpretation 
of the transcendentalists but also denied the existence 
of the a priori. Accepting the principle that every 
knowledge must ultimately be a statement of facts, 
the question, How is the a priori to be based upon 



72 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

facts ? became in my conception of philosophy the 
burning problem which was next in order as a recon- 
ciliation between Kant and Comte. 

The French positivists, foremost among them 
Comte and Littre, have not given us an explanation 
of what is true and what false in the teleological and 
metaphysical notions of first and final causes, of the 
a priori, of God, of substance, of force, etc ; they have 
simply abandoned the investigation of these ideas 
which are after all the most important tools in the 
household of the human mind for scientific and eth- 
ical purposes; and thus they have, in spite of their 
positivism in questions of detail, retained the meta- 
physical method of a priori reasoning, which is quite 
legitimate in the formal science but out of place con- 
cerning facts. Take for instance the following argu- 
ment concerning the materiality of things : 

'La, c'est a. dire dans les sciences positives, on ne connait 
aucune propriete sans matiere, non point parce que, a priori, on 
y a l'idee preconcue qu'il n'existe aucune substance spirituelle in- 
dependante, mais parce que, a posteriori, on n'a jamais rencontre 
la gravitation sans corps pesant, la chaleur sans corps chaud, 
l'electricite sans corps electrique, l'affinite sans substances de com- 
binaison, la vie, la sensibilite, la pensee, sans etre vivant, sentant 
et pensant." — La Science, p. 307. 

I do not mean to say that there are immaterial or 
spiritual substances, but I should say that any purely 
a posteriori argument in favor of their non-existence 
is insufficient. Does Littre mean that a Zulu would 



FRENCH POSITIVISM. 73 

declare that ice cannot exist because he has never seen 
water frozen as hard as a stone? Any amount of ex- 
perience, i. e. , all a posteriori evidence, is in parts and 
will out of itself never acquire universal validity. 

How strongly Littre is still implicated in the meta- 
physical method of applying a priori ideas to a poste- 
riori experiences can be learned from the following 
statement : 

" Le monde est constitue par la matiere et par les forces de la 
matiere : la matiere dont l'origine et l'essence nous sont inacces- 
sible ; les forces qui sont immanentes a la matiere. Au dela de ces 
deux termes, matiere et force, la science positive ne connait rien." 
Preface, p. ix. 

The metaphysical ideas, matter and force, are a 
priori notions of mystical entities or things- in-them- 
selves, and thus it appears natural that experience 
should know nothing of them. But real matter and 
actual force are not unknowable existences. They 
can be known. We know something of them and 
positive science is engaged in broadening and deepen- 
ing this knowledge. While denying that positive sci- 
ence can know anything of matter and energy, Littre" 
claims that we do know the properties of substance. 
He says : 

"Les proprietes physiques sont manifestes en toute substance, 
dans quelque etat qu'elle soit, isolee ou non isolee, et s'exercent 
sur les masses ; les proprietes, n'apparaissent qu'eutre deux sub- 
stances, ont besoin de la binarite et s'exercent sur les molecules ; 
enfin les proprietes vitales depassant la binarite, ne sont compa- 
tibles qu'avec un etat moleculaire plus compose." Preface, p. x. 



74 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

If we can know the properties of a thing, we can 
know the thing too, which is but the sum-total of its 
properties ; and if we can know all kinds of substance, 
we can also know substance. There is less to be 
known about substance in general, for the idea con- 
tains only those properties of the several substances 
which they have in common. Substance is not a meta- 
physical essence, but an abstract term which denotes 
certain features of reality, recorded in experience. 

One of the fundamental principles of genuine pos- 
itivism, is the definition of knowledge as a descrip- 
tion of facts or of their properties. We call certain 
properties of the facts (i. e., the objects of our experi- 
ence) matter, and others force. When we say that 
we do or do not know certain phenomena, we mean 
that we have or have not as yet succeeded in placing 
them properly in that system of thought-symbols of 
which our mind consists. Yet there is no sense in 
speaking of matter and force as being unknowable 
while the properties of matter and force are said to be 
manifest and to appear under certain conditions. 

Comte is an agnostic and he was an agnostic be- 
fore that name had been invented. His objection to 
metaphysicism consists in the doctrine, not that the 
object of metaphysics is a chimerical non-existence, 
but that the object of metaphysics exists yet it cannot 
be known. Thus he is as much a metaphysician as 
those philosophers whom he censures for their meta- 
physical views. He does not censure them for be- 



FRENCH POSITIVISM. 75 

lieving that the metaphysical exists, but for believing 
that it is knowable and attempting to investigate its 
nature. 

As to Comte's hierarchy of the sciences (which in 
the form in which he presented it is now antiquated, 
because the sciences there summarised have made con- 
siderable progress since Comte's Positive Philosophy 
was written), I shall simply quote a few extracts from 
Eugen Diihring's criticism of Comte. Duhring says 
(Krit. Gesch. der Phil., p. 486): 

' ' If Comte's positivism were nothing more than what we have 
here laid down, its main contents would, strange enough, consist 
in negativity . The criticism of a certain kind of metaphysics, 
viz., of an ontology phantastical to a greater or lesser extent, would 
form its most significant character. The other element which con- 
sists in presenting a hierarchy and unitary conjunction of some of 
the sciences which are called positive in the usual sense of the 
term, cannot pretend to be philosophy in the higher sense of the 
word or even to be useful for science. A general view of knowl- 
edge, whether it consists of six or sixty volumes, does not add the 
least iota to the contents of our knowledge. . . . We cannot expect 
that a specialist should be pleased with a hierarchical sketch of 
his science, especially if the delineations are filled out with details 
of which he (the specialist) would be a better judge." 

It is true, and I concur in this with the French 
positivists, that a positive philosophy must be syste- 
matic arrangement of knowledge. But I conceive it 
to be the philosopher's work to offer a digest of the 
sciences and not merely to take an inventory of their 
contents. Further, he should define the fundamental 



76 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

concepts of scientific inquiry and elucidate the meth- 
ods of cognition. Such fundamental concepts are the 
ideas, truth and criterion of truth, cause and effect, 
mind, thought, knowledge, ethics, etc. Concepts are 
the tools of thought and the practice of using them 
correctly has to be learned. 

A positive philosophy is inseparable from, but it 
cannot be replaced by, the sciences. The duty of 
philosophy is to superintend the method and the plan 
of building, so as to compare the details and bear in 
mind the unity and purpose of the whole. In this 
sense Duhring says in criticising Comte (p. 486) : 

" However, concerning the form of the connections of meth- 
odical reflections, something can be done. Yet it must be possible 
to separate everything of such a kind and also new insights, so as 
to constitute a special branch of knowledge. Otherwise they will 
escape the specialists' attention. . . .Not only Comte but all philos- 
ophers given to the idea of systematisation and construction of 
particular knowledge have made attempts in this direction which 
at most may range as sketches or popular presentations in a higher 



In other words positivism must become a syste- 
matic conception of facts. The description of the 
data of experience must be consistent and method- 
ical. In other words : Genuine positivism is monistic. 
But monism is not merely a denial of dualism : on the 
contrary it is a recognition of dualities and their rec- 
onciliation in higher unities. 

Monism in the sense of a one-substance theory is 



FRENCH POSITIVISM. 77 

pseudo-monism. It is not a unitary world-concep- 
tion, but a single-idea system, and I propose to call 
it Henism. 1 Henism endeavors to subsume everything 
under one general notion, be it matter, or motion, or 
spirit, or matter in motion, or an unknown substratum. 
But the principle of genuine monism is consistency. 
It proposes to build up an harmonious world-concep- 
tion based on the principle that there is but one truth. 
There may be contrasts, but there are no contradic- 
tions, in truth, and all truths should form one great 
system of verities. 2 

The most subtle ideas of the purely relational as- 
pects of experience are of paramount importance in 
practical life which has led to their formulation in the 
popular form of religious doctrines. To discard reli- 
gion as mere superstition as much betrays an unphilo- 
sophical mind as to accept it blindly. Comte recog- 
nised the significance of religion, but being limited in 
his knowledge of church life to Roman Catholicism, 
he failed by imitating too closely the forms of the Ro- 
man Church. 

lFrom the Greek ev, the neuter of els which is the numeral one, while 
/aovos means one in the sense of " alone, or one in kind." 

2 Prof. Ernst Haeckel, so admirable as a naturalist, is (in our opinion) not 
equally successful as a philosopher. He is a personal friend of ours, yet we 
must frankly state that his Monism remains on the surface and we would call 
it a pseudo-monism or henism. Haeckel does not appreciate the paramount 
importance of form, and thus he fails to see the significance of the ideal fea- 
tures of human life, the religious conceptions of God, soul, immortality. 
There is no need of entering here into details, and we therefore refer the 
reader to our articles on the subject which appeared in The Monist, Vol. II., 
No. 3, pp. 43S-442. Compare also The Monist, Vol. II., pp. 598-600, and The 
Open Court, No. 212. See also "Theology as a Science" [The Monist, Vol. 
XII., No. 4, and Vol. XIII., No. 1). 



78 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

Concerning Littre's view of Comte's religious va- 
garies, Diihring says (p. 483): 

"His [Comte's] biographer, the Academician Littre of Paris, 
and also Stuart Mill are right in considering ' The Course of Posi- 
tive Philosophy ' as the main and fundamental work which is de- 
cisive as a contribution of his and a source of instruction to the 
world. However, they are very one-sided when they overlook 
that the philosopher even in his vagaries exhibited a universality 
of mind which remains superior to the standpoint of either Littre 
or Mill." 

It must be granted that Comte's religion as he con- 
ceived it consists of vagaries, but the main idea of de- 
veloping the religions of the past which, as Littre says, 
are not false but only incomplete religions, into a reli- 
gion that shall be in accord with the science of our 
day is no vagary, but a great and an important ideal. 1 

Far be it from us to belittle either Comte or Littre" 
because we disagree with them in the fundamental 
questions of philosophy. Comte was in his time, he 
is still, and will remain for ever, a star of first magni- 
tude in our philosophical galaxy. That which we con- 
sider his errors does not detract from his greatness. 
Were not Kant's mistakes in a similar way closely in- 
terwoven with his great merits? 

HERBERT SPENCER'S AGNOSTICISM. 

A discussion of Mr. Herbert Spencer's agnosti- 
cism ought to follow the discussion of French pOSitiv- 
lAs collateral reading compare the author's booklet The Religion of Sci- 
ence, and his article "The Problem of Consciousness" {TheMonist, Vol. XIII., 
No. 1). 



CLIFFORD AND SCHOPENHAUER. 79 

ism. But having devoted a special booklet to a ven- 
tilation of Spencer's philosophy under the title Kant 
and Spencer ; a Study of the Fallacies of Agnosticism ; 1 
and furthermore in consideration of the fact that so 
far as the metaphysical problem is concerned, Mr. 
Spencer's view of the unknowable in no way differs 
from Auguste Comte's belief in the inconnaissable, the 
author feels no need of repeating himself. For a crit- 
icism of Mr. Spencer's peculiar methods of establish- 
ing his doctrine of the "utterly inscrutable" mystery 
of existence, see the third chapter of Kant and Spen- 
cer, entitled "Mr. Spencer's Agnosticism." 

CLIFFORD AND SCHOPENHAUER. 

When Clifford speaks of things-in-themselves he 
does not mean Kant's things-in-themselves ; he means 
neither the object independent of the thinking subject 
nor the thing independent of space and time. He 
means the thing as it would be in itself, viz., if viewed 
from the thing itself. 

A man appears to other thinking beings as an ac- 
tive body, as an organism that is in motion ; but to 
himself he appears as a feeling being. The subjec- 
tivity of things as they appear to the things them- 
selves consists in our own case of states of awareness, 
and this subjectivity is called by Clifford the thing-in- 
itself. 

A certain brain motion is in its subjective aspect a 

1 Published as No. 40 of The Religion of Science Library (20 cents). 



8o THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

feeling. This feeling is, according to Clifford, the 
thing-in-itself of the brain-motion, which (at least in 
theory) is an observable and measurable process. 
The thing-in-itself of so-called inanimate beings is no 
feeling, but elements of feeling. In other words, the 
world-substance is everywhere in itself potentiality of 
feeling and Clifford therefore calls it "mind-stuff." 

Schopenhauer arrives at his conception of the 
thing-in-itself practically in the same way. There is 
the world as it appears to us, the objective world of 
motion in space and time. What the kernel of this 
world may be, we can know from self-observation. 
The kernel of ourselves, Schopenhauer says, is Will ; 
and the will is also the kernel of things ; the will is 
the thing in itself. 

Schopenhauer says : 

"The source of the knowledge of metaphysics is not outer 
experience alone, but also inner. Indeed, this is most peculiar to 
it, and hereby the decisive step which alone can solve the great 
question becomes possible. . . .that at the right place it combines 
outer experience with inner, and uses the latter as a key to the 
former." 

Schopenhauer agrees with Clifford in regarding 
the subjective as the thing-in-itself and looking upon 
the body, viz., matter in motion, as its appearance. 
There is only this difference, that Schopenhauer em- 
phasises the active feature of the subject, while Clif- 
ford excludes activity as being typical of motion, viz., 
objective existence. 



CLIFFORD AND SCHOPENHAUER. 01 

This procedure practically identifies the metaphys- 
ical with the subjectivity of existence, and we accept 
it without hesitation ; but in doing so we bear in mind 
that we do not enter here into a domain from which 
science is debarred. An investigation of the subjec- 
tive nature of ourselves and other sentient beings is 
commonly called psychology and not metaphysics, 
and the methods of psychology are the same as the 
methods of any other science. Explanations are as 
much descriptions in psychology as in physics; there 
is only this difference, that what Schopenhauer calls 
metaphysics is, as it were, generalised psychology. 
We attribute to other beings, according to their form, 
subjectivities analogous to those which our own bodies 
possess. Now, suppose we call such a generalised 
psychology by the traditional term "metaphysics," 
and the innermost nature of reality "things-in-them- 
selves," we should most certainly not be justified in 
saying that our cognition invariably leads us to an x, 
that we always arrive at an unknown quantity, con- 
cerning the nature of which we cannot have the faint- 
est idea or comprehension. 

The science of a generalised psychology or meta- 
physics would have to explain how the ultimate con- 
stituents of man's soul are the same as the subjectiv- 
ity of a burning flame or of a falling stone. It would 
have to explain how the subjectivity, plain and sim- 
ple as it appears in inorganic nature, builds up a 
higher life in organised animal nature, where it be- 



82 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

comes feeling, and how feeling becomes mind by be- 
ing representative of the various objective conditions 
which produce a variety of feeling. 
Schopenhauer says {ibid., p. 202): 

" How can a science that is derived from experience lead be- 
yond experience, and thus deserve the name of metaphysics ? It 
can not do so in the same way as, according to the rule of three, 
the fourth number, or as from two sides and an angle the third 
side of a triangle is found. . . .The whole of experience is like a 
cryptography, and philosophy is its explanation, the correctness 
of which is proved by the sense that appears in the context. If 
the whole is only understood in its full depth and connected with 
inner and outer experience, it must be possible to be interpreted 
and explained out of itself." 

If metaphysics denotes ''that which ventures be- 
yond experience" (this is Schopenhauer's definition), 
we deny the existence of metaphysics, for our subjec- 
tivity is, as Schopenhauer himself says, inner experi- 
ence. Our soul is the metaphysical essence of our 
bodily being, and what is better known to us than 
our own existence? Neither is the object of meta- 
physics, viz., the so-called thing-in-itself, or the inner- 
most nature of being, i. e., the subjectivity of exist- 
ence, anything that lies beyond or behind nature and 
outside of the range of science. On the contrary, it 
is the heart of nature, its essence or the inner nature 
of nature. The metaphysical, accordingly, is so far 
from being outside of experience that it is the very 
cornerstone of the possibility of experience. It does 



CLIFFORD AND SCHOPENHAUER. 83 

not lie beyond the limits of our cognition of nature 
and involves us in no ignorabimus. 1 It does not com- 
mit us to a belief in anything intrinsically unknow- 
able, which is always the confession of philosophical 
insolvency. It is so far from being foreign, unknown, 
or incomprehensible to us that it forms the very es- 
sence of our own existence. For this same reason 
Goethe objects to the idea of the inaccessibility of 
Nature's interior. 2 He says: 

1 Du Bois Reymond, in speaking of the Grenzen des N aturerkennens , sums 
up his view in the Agnostic conclusion ignorabimus, which (with a leaning 
toward mysticism; he presents to us as a sevenfold world-riddle. See his lec- 
ture Die sieben Weltratsel. 

Du Bois-Reymond's proposition, that "if only one single brain-atom 
could be moved by thought one-millionth fraction of a millimetre from the 
path prescribed by the laws of mechanics, the whole world-formula would 
cease to have meaning," is quite true, if by "thought" is understood the 
mere subjectivity of thought, while the objectivity is considered as operating 
without our taking reference to its subjectivity. But we must not forget that 
there are no thoughts which are not at the same time brain-motions; and 
there is no question that while a man thinks the atoms of his brain move; 
and these brain-motions, small though they are, are of enormous consequence, 
for they, being the exponents of conscious aims, bring purpose into the world 
of physical causation, which renders " the world-formula " such as a phys- 
icist may propound by confining his attention to mechanics alone, but is im- 
measurably more complex, without annulling it. Du Bois-Reymond's propo- 
sition is misleading because the word "thought " is an abstraction, and there 
are as little ideas which are not at the same time motions, as there is gravity 
outside of mass. If he understands by gravity the abstract notion of the sub- 
jectivity of mass, to the exclusion of real mass, he might as well have said: 
"Gravity exercises no influence in the world which is strictly governed by 
mechanical law. If one single dust-particle could be moved by gravity one- 
millionth fraction of a millimetre from the path prescribed by the laws of 
mechanics, the whole world-formula would cease to have meaning." And 
the same proposition can be varied ad libitum. In the same sense, "chem- 
ical affinity" cannot move a single atom, and if it could, the laws of me- 
chanics would be meaningless. — (Compare The Monzst, Vol. III., No. 4, pp. 
612-615, where this subject is discussed in detail.) 

2 If the terms esoteric and exoteric were not monopolised for another 
purpose, we might introduce them to denote the subjective and the objective 
aspects. We might call the soul the esoteric and the body the exoteric side 
of our existence. 



84 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

"Schritt fur Schritt 
Sind wir im Innern." 1 

The method, however, by which we arrive at the 
conclusion that the inner nature of other things is 
analogous to our own inner nature is exactly the same 
rule of three which Schopenhauer regards as insuffi- 
cient. He himself applies it unconsciously, while 
Clifford gives precision to Schopenhauer's solution of 
the problem by saying : 

"As the physical configuration of my cerebral image of the 
object 

"Is to the physical configuration of the object, 

"So z's my perception of the object (the object regarded as 
complex of my feelings) 

"To the thing-in-itself." 

In other words : 

As the brain-structure (which is matter in motion) 
is to its analogous idea, so the object is to the inner- 
most nature of the object. Or as cerebral activity i:; 
to my soul, so the material object (the phenomenon) 
is to the soul of the object as the object is in itself. 

This conception, which is a consistent monism, 
recognises the spirituality of all existence, but it ex- 
cludes the possibility of ghosts. Ghosts are bodiless 
souls, and souls, wherever they exist in reality, will, 
by the very fact of their existence, appear as material 
bodies to other sentient beings, and must originate, 

1 Literally : " Pace for pace, we are in the interior." For a full metrical 
translation of the whole poem see p. 91 of the present volume. (Cf. Funda 
mental Problems, pp. 141-142 ; and The Monist, Vol. II., pp. 154-155.) 



CLIFFORD AND SCHOPENHAUER. 85 

act, and evolve according to the mechanical laws of 
change. They cannot be conjured by magicians from 
the vast inane, but must develop in nature according 
to the laws of nature. On the other hand, the laws 
of nature do not give us an account only of purely ma- 
terial phenomena. By revealing the laws of the phys- 
ical exterior we can decipher the spiritual (the sub- 
jective, or, if you please, metaphysical) interior of 
the various objects that people the world around us. 

Schopenhauer uses the term "will" in a peculiar 
sense which can easily produce confusion. We un- 
derstand by will the passage into action, i. e., an in- 
cipient motion of the organism if accompanied with 
the psychical element of consciousness, and this con- 
sciousness is a state of awareness of the will including 
its direction and aim. Will, as the term is generally 
used, is always conscious. Schopenhauer however 
speaks of the will as being blind, i. e., without knowl- 
edge, without awareness of itself and its aim. This 
indicates that he uses the word not in its original but 
in a figurative sense. 

The fall of a stone may be characterised as a blind 
motion without awareness and without the stone's 
having a consciousness as to its direction or aim ; and 
in a similar (although not the same) way Clifford 
speaks of the elements of feeling as being not rational. 
We agree with Schopenhauer that that factor in a 
stone which makes it fall when placed in a certain po- 
sition is as much a natural process as the act of a 



86 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

man, only of a lower grade and a simpler kind. 
Schopenhauer calls that which both have in common 
"will." Yet in common language we call the objec- 
tive aspect of that which both processes have in com- 
mon, "motion." What then is the subjective aspect 
of a falling stone? It is not a state of awareness, it 
is not feeling, but it is the potentiality of a state of 
awareness, it is potential feeling. There is a subjec- 
tive aspect, but this subjective aspect is, so far as we 
can judge, of no account to the stone. 

That something in the stone which corresponds to 
man's consciousness, viz., the stone's subjectivity, is 
neither will nor mind, but it is potential will and po- 
tential mind. But potential mind is not (as for in- 
stance Mr. Conybeare expresses it) "mind diluted"; 
potential mind is no mind at all. 

Clifford calls the elements of reality (viz., the sub- 
jectivity of existence), " mind-stuff," because they are 
the stuff of which mind is made up. "Matter" is 
only the mental picture in which the mind-stuff repre- 
sents itself, but mind-stuff is "not rational, not intelli 
gent, not conscious." 

So far we agree with Clifford, but we go one step 
further. While it is true that "reason, intelligence, 
and volition," as he says, "are the properties of a 
complex," we know at the same time that the condi- 
tions through which "reason, intelligence, and voli- 
tion " are formed are founded upon laws of form which 
are (as laws of form) intrinsically necessary, and uni- 



CLIFFORD AND SCHOPENHAUER. 87 

versal, and omnipresent, and immutable, and consist- 
ent (i. e. , intrinsically harmonious 1 ), and omnibenefi- 
cent, and unfailingly just. And they are the most 
real realities of existence. They hold good every- 
where and apply to any possible world ; they would 
remain true even if the world did not exist. They are 
the immanent law of nature ; but they are above na- 
ture, and even if the constitution of nature were dif- 
ferent, they would remain in force. Thus they are in 
the literal sense of the word supernatural. 

Clifford overlooks the importance of these points 
and thus arrives at a conclusion which would stamp 
his philosophy as atheistical. Human reason does 
not originate through a haphazard combination of non- 
rational elements ; but according to a law which con- 
stitutes the characteristic feature of the cosmic order. 
While the elements of existence cannot be regarded 
as rational, there is intrinsically immanent in all ex- 
istence the formative factor of the eternal and omni- 
present law that makes for rationality, and for all the 
ideals of a rational mind, — wisdom, righteousness, lov- 
ing-kindness. 

The laws of form are not concrete things but uni- 
versal presences ; but because they are not material 
objects, they are not non-existent, nor ineffectual, nor 
unreal. On the contrary, they are superreal and more 
important than any concrete things of actual material- 
ity. 

1 Humanly speaking, we might say "all-wise." 



88 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

The world-substance as it exists in inorganic mat- 
ter is not mind. But the universe taken as a whole, 
the All, is for that reason not less than mind. On the 
contrary, it is infinitely more than mind. The All is 
not brute force and inert matter only, the universe is a 
cosmos, and its subjectivity develops, according to the 
laws of form which characterise the cosmos through- 
out, into mind. We disagree with Professor Clifford 
most emphatically when he describes the mind-stuff 
of which according to his terminology the world con- 
sists, as not rational. 

The world, it is true, is nqt rational in its elements, 
but the world as a whole, the entire cosmos with its 
laws and especially in its formal order, is the proto- 
type of all rationality. Human reason is rational only 
in so far as it conforms with, as it reflects, as it de- 
scribes, the order of the cosmos. The human mind is 
a microcosm. We do not call the macrocosm, in 
whose image the microcosm has been created, a mind, 
because we understand by the term mind not reality 
itself but reality pictured in symbols of feeling. We 
understand by mind the individual conception of the 
world as it is mapped out in the brain of a sentient 
being, and not the universe itself, not the all-being. 
We understand by mind a creature and not the crea- 
tor, a soul and not God. 

The cosmos, viz., the world in its entirety, the har- 
mony of its constitution, religiously speaking, God, 
that which creates the mind, is not dead, not irra- 



CLIFFORD AND SCHOPENHAUER. 89 

tional, and not inferior to mentality. It is the source 
of all life, it is the condition of all order, it is the 
standard of all morality. All the minds that exist are 
but parts of it. In it, with it, and through it, we live 
and shall live forever. For although we shall die, our 
being can never be blotted out. Existence knows no 
annihilation and life knows no death. What we call 
death is a dissolution of life in a special part, but the 
contents of a life, the thoughts, the ideas, and the 
ideals, are preserved and transmitted, they are im- 
planted into other minds ; the soul continues to live. 
And this continuance of the life of the soul is not a 
mere dissolution in the All, it is not the immortality 
of force and matter (as Haeckel puts it); it is the pre- 
servation of its spcial existence, of its most character- 
istic and individual features for an immeasurably long 
period hence, which will last as long as the conditions 
of life remain favorable upon earth. Yet even if a 
whole solar system were broken to pieces, life would 
reappear; mind would be born again to struggle for 
truth and to aspire to live in conformity with truth, 
and even there, in other worlds, rational beings would 
appear and struggle for the same ideals we strived 
after. If we knew them as we know ourselves, we 
should sympathise with them as with our children, 
and should see in them an incarnation of our own 
souls. 



go THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 



PROFESSOR DEUSSEN'S MODERNISED METAPHYSICS. 

Professor Paul Deussen's History of Philosophy, is 
in every respect abreast of the times, save in the 
one point which is so deeply ingrained in the school- 
philosophy of to-day : it still clings to metaphysicism. 
Professor Deussen defines philosophy as being in the 
main "the search after the thing-in-itself. " He de- 
clares that it is peculiar to philosophy to regard the 
object of its inquiry, which comprises the totality of 
all existence, as "something that needs further explana- 
tion" treating it as "a problem that points beyond it- 
self" He says : "While all other sciences are phys- 
ical, philosophy is metaphysical." Although he denies 
that philosophy goes beyond experience in a tran- 
scendent way, he yet insists that "philosophy pene- 
trates experience in order to seize its kernel, while 
all physical science remains engaged with its shell. 
Thus all philosophy is ultimately metaphysics." 

The distinction between the metaphysical kernel 

and the physical shell of nature was the basis of Hal- 

ler's agnosticism, who said : 

"Nature's 'within' from mortal mind 
Must ever lie concealed, 
Thrice blessed e'en he to whom she has 
Her outer shell revealed." 

Goethe most emphatically rejected Haller's view 
by saying : 



PROFESSOR DEUSSEN S MODERNISED METAPHYSICS, gi 

" ' A r alure's " zvithin "from, mortal mind,' 
Philistine, sayest thou, 
' Must ever lie coyicealed? ' 
To me, my friend, and to my kind 
Repeat this not. We trow 
Where'er we are that we 
Within must always be. 

' ' ' Thrice blessed e'en he to zuhom she has 
Her older shell revealed? ' 
This saying sixty years I heard 
Repeated o'er and o'er, 
And in my soul I cursed the word, 
Yet secretly I swore. 
Some thousand thousand times or more 
Unto myself I witness bore : 
' Gladly gives Nature all her store, 
She knows not kernel, knows not shell, 
For she is all in one. 

But thou, 
Examine thou thine own self well 
Whether thou art kernel or art shell." 

There is no harm in using allegorical expressions, 
such as kernel and shell, but there is danger in build- 
ing philosophical theories upon them. Nor is there 
any objection to the term " metaphysical," provided 
it be clearly defined, and all misconstruction, as though 
it meant something thai points beyond experience, or 
leads behind nature, be excluded. 

Professor Deussen has also written a text-book on 
The Ele7?ients of Metaphysics, which is of interest as an 
elaboration of a metaphysical philosophy, which, so 
far as historical and philological scholarship is con- 
cerned, is thoroughly up to date. The very first page, 
however, shows the lack of a truly scientific spirit, so 



92 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

much needed in philosophy. Professor Deussen be- 
gins dogmatically with the proposition that two stand- 
points are possible, the empirical and the transcen- 
dental. The former, inquiring into phenomena, is 
"physics" in the widest sense of the world; the lat- 
ter, inquiring after the thing-in-itself, is "metaphys- 
ics." In paragraphs 7 and 8 we are told that time and 
space are infinite. In paragraphs 8 and 10 he says: 
"Everything that exists necessarily exists in space, 
for otherwise it would be nowhere, and accordingly 
would not exist at all." The same argument is re- 
peated in paragraph 10: "Everything that happens 
necessarily happens in time, for otherwise it would 
happen never, and accordingly it would not happen at 
all." This start is characteristic of a metaphysical 
philosophy. 

A positive philosophy begins with a statement of 
facts. Facts are our data which have to be explained, 
but it is not easy to determine what "facts" in this 
sense means. The facts from which we have to start 
are the experiences commonly called sense-percep- 
tions ; and upon a further inquiry, we discover that 
they are the elements which in the long process of 
evolution have built up our soul. 

As to time and space, the positive philosopher 
does not predict their infinity, but inquires into the 
nature and origin of these notions. We find that both 
are the product of abstraction, and would say that an 
idea from which the notion of space is excluded repre- 



PROFESSOR DEUSSEN S MODERNISED METAPHYSICS. 93 

sents something whose nature is independent of space. 
Thus there are indeed many things which exist with- 
out being either in time or space. The existence of 
non-spatial realities is an old crux in philosophy, as 
we know from The Questions of King Milinda, where 
Nagasena maintains and proves the positive existence 
of Nirvana, although Nirvana is neither in time nor in 
space. The unbeliever is refuted by a reductio ad ab- 
surdum and Nagasena proves that according to the 
logic of his adversary wisdom is an non-entity, for it 
is nowhere. 

Space is not (as Kant has pointed out) a mysteri- 
ous entity. It is not a thing-in-itself, not a meta- 
physical box in which existence is contained. But it 
is a feature of existence. Space is extension, and ex- 
tention is a quality of the objective world. As exten- 
sion, space represents the interrelation of things, in- 
cluding, if they are in motion, also a possible inter- 
relation, viz., direction and all possible change of 
direction, or, in a word, the possibility of motion. 

The infinity of space would be mysterious, if it 
were a box in which the world is contained ; but it 
ceases to be mysterious as soon as we understand that 
it is the possibility of motion which in every direction 
is unlimited. 

Time, in the same way, is not an incomprensible 
monster which swallows the things that are now, and, 
at the same time, begets the things that will be. Time 
is as little a thing-in-itself as space. Time is not that 



94 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

which contains all the events that take place, but it is 
an abstract idea derived from the facts of our experi- 
ence. Time is nothing but the purely formal aspect 
of the measure of change, considering the succession 
and duration of events. Time, as measure of change, 
is accomplished through the establishment of a unit 
of duration. 

Professor Deussen assumes metaphysics in the 
very beginning of his philosophy. No wonder that 
after a critical examination of the material under his 
hands he finds throughout a metaphysical residuum, 
casting a glamor of mysticism over his whole world- 
conception, which may be characterised as a modern- 
ised edition of Schopenhauer's philosophy. 

The main difference between Professor Deussen's 
and our own views becomes most apparent in his judg- 
ment of Kant. He says : 

"It was Kant who after so many vagaries of human thought 
proposed the question, whether we have at all in human reason a 
fit tool to transcend experience and to discover any tenable propo- 
sitions concerning such transcendent objects as soul and God." 

Kant, in our opinion, was right in denying to the 
faculty of reason the power of transcending experi- 
ence, but we will add that this feat is not required of 
reason. Reason is a fit tool to extend experience, to 
deepen its significance, to systematise its data and ar- 
range them for a handy application to practical life. 
The ideas God and soul, if considered as transcen- 
dental objects, are empty metaphysical speculations 



PROFESSOR DEUSSEN'S MODERNISED METAPHYSICS. 95 

without any practical value, and, indeed, being ex 
hypothesi transcendent, also without any theoretical 
value. We do not find them in our experience and can 
safely say that we know nothing of them ; therefore 
we need not bother about their existence. Whether 
transcendent existences exist or not, affects us in no 
way. 

We shall see, however, that the terms God and 
soul have been invented to denote some most impor- 
tant features of reality, such as we find in experience, 
but in this latter sense they are neither transcendent, 
nor metaphysical, nor unknowable, but form, what- 
ever name we may give them, the daily bread of our 
intellectual, moral, and emotional life. 

Kant when investigating in his Critique of Prac- 
tical Reason the part our ideas of soul, of cosmic unity, 
and God play in our moral aspirations, left as he 
found it the most important part of the philosophical 
problem which he attacked. The fallacies of meta- 
physicism he put down as paralogisms of reason her- 
self and sanctified them for practical purposes in the 
shape in which our religious traditions had cast them. 
Instead of keeping two contradictory accounts, one 
for theoretical and the other for practical reason, he 
should have proceeded to purify the meaning of these 
practical ideas in the furnace of pure reason. By the 
elimination of their metaphysical interpretation he 
could have reduced them to their proper significance 
in practical life, and would thus have at once cor- 



96 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

rected the error and explained its origin. This work, 
left undone by our great master, is the task we have 
set ourselves to accomplish. 1 
Deussen continues : 

" His investigation into the nature of reason induced Kant to 
subject the whole apparatus of cognition to an unprecedented 
critique and examination, the result of which was the indubitable 
proof that it was impossible to go beyond experience, and at the 
same time a radical destruction of all speculations concerning soul, 
the world-totality, and God. On this occasion Kant made the 
greatest of all discoveries which ever was made in our science, 
viz., that certain portions of empirical reality which we naturally 
regard as belonging to the outer world, space, time, and causality, 
are in fact nothing but inborn forms of our own faculty of cog- 
nition." 

The author's own mind has been trained in the 
school of Kant, and he reveres him as the master at 
whose feet he sat. Nevertheless, he regards this so- 
called greatest of all discoveries as a great mistake, — 
great in the best sense of the word. It is a grand 
mistake because it was due to the boldness of a great 
thinker who took the consequence of an error seri- 
ously and dared to think out its consequences. Kant 
courageously drew the inferences of his error in spite 
of their absurdity. In my opinion, Kant was right in 
his distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, 
but he was wrong in attributing the former exclusively 
to the subjectivity of our mental conceptions. All 

1 See the author's The Religion of Science, The Ethical Problem, Homilies 
of Science, Whence and Whither, and other publications. 



PROFESSOR DEUSSEN'S MODERNISED METAPHYSICS. 97 

the a priori sciences are ideal, as Kant says, but Kant 
uses the word " ideal" in the sense of subjective, and 
this confusion of ideality and subjectivity is the error 
hidden in the foundation of his philosophy. And 
Schiller says : 

"Let but an error be hid in the stone of foundation ; the builder 
Buildeth with confidence on : never the error is found." 

Kant being unable to derive the a priori horn ex- 
perience which he unfortunately limits to and identi- 
fies with the a posteriori ox the sense-element of expe- 
rience, seeks his principle of explanation beyond 
experience in "the thing-in-itself," and Deussen ac- 
cepts Kant's position. He says : 

"The consequence of Kant's great discovery was that the 
world, such as we know it, viz., extended in time and space and 
regulated by causality, is in this its form a mere phenomenon and 
not a thing-in-itself." 

Kant leaves us in doubt, and Professor Deussen 
will probably not be able to explain to us what Kant 
really meant by thing-in-itself. It may mean (i) the 
object as it is independent of sensation, or (2) the 
object as it would be in itself, i. e., the object's sub- 
jectivity; what we might call the soul of the object ; 
or perhaps (3) the metaphysical condition of phys- 
ical existence, the raison d'etre of being and its ulti- 
mate ground. 

The cognition of the thing-in-itself in the first 
sense, as object, is the domain of science. The ob- 



g8 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

jective reality which produces the subjective phenom- 
enon of a rainbow is by physics supposed to be a cer- 
tain refraction of ether-waves. The colors of the rain- 
bow are a phenomenon that exists in the eye only ; 
but the ether-vibrations are an objective process which 
is supposed to take place whether or not any eye per- 
ceives it. The thing-in-itself in the first sense is 
neither outside of space, time, and causality, nor is it 
any incomprehensible metaphysical entity. 

As to the thing-in-itself in the second sense, which 
is the subjectivity of the objective existence, we must 
bear in mind that it stands to its sense-perceptible 
existence, as a material object appearing in time and 
space, in the same relation as our soul stands to our 
body, and we have good reasons to believe that its 
nature exactly corresponds to the structure of its bod- 
ily appearance, so that in lower animals it is as differ- 
ent from man's soul as is the animal organism from 
the human organism ; while in inorganic nature it is 
on a still lower plane. Accordingly it is not unknow- 
able, but, lying within the pale of space, time, and 
causality, it may be understood from its manifestation 
in objective existence. 

Finally, the thing-in-itself in the third sense is 
perhaps not different from the thing-in-itself in the 
second sense ; for we are justified in assuming that 
what we commonly call the soul of man is the core of 
his being which manifests itself in his bodily appear- 
ance. 



PROFESSOR DEUSSEN'S MODERNISED METAPHYSICS. 99 

However, if thing-in-itself designates the eternal 
aspect of things, viz., their ideas in the sense of Plato's 
philosophy, we reach the realm of pure forms ; and 
in the laws of pure form we have found the principle 
that will explain the nature of existence. Yet whether 
we call it with Fichte the ego, or with Spinoza sub- 
stance, or with Jacob Bohme God, or with Schopen- 
hauer the will, is perfectly gratuitous. All these 
terms are names originally invented to define a cer- 
tain part of existence which is felt to be of great 
importance and may allegorically be called the inner- 
most kernel of being. The nature of all things is de- 
termined by their form, and if we consider them in 
their absolute existence as pure ideas we have "forms- 
in-themselves." 

Forms-in-themselves are nothing unknowable nor 
mystical. As soon as they are supposed to lead be- 
yond experience into a transcendent sphere, we enter 
the realm of dreams So far as these ideas denote a 
feature of our real experience they are helpful, but as 
soon as they are hypostasised, they assume the exist- 
ence of entra-experiential entities which renders them 
redundant, and we can very well do without them. 
Our soul is real enough such as it appears in the facts 
of life, and God is great enough such as we compre- 
hend him in the dispensation of life as the superper- 
sonal omnipresence in the universe constituting the 
ultimate authority of moral conduct. 



IOO THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

According to Deussen : 

"Kant considered the essence of the thing-in-itself as theo- 
retically unknowable, yet he opened upon it in the second and 
practical part of his philosophy an outlook by referring moral ac- 
tion to an a priori innate moral law which he called a categorical 
imperative, and this he declared to be the law which man as a 
thing-in-itself prescribes to man as a phenomenon." 

Mentioning among the successors of Kant such 
men as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Herbart, who 
"hoped to overcome in an offhand way the difficulties 
discovered by Kant," Deussen adds : 

"In opposition to them, Schopenhauer attempts to compre- 
hend Kant thoroughly, and to free his doctrine from the weeds of 
misunderstood traditions. Upon this foundation he applies Kant's 
ideas, in the direction pointed out by himself, in such a way as to 
make Kant the founder, and Schopenhauer the perfecter of a uni- 
tary metaphysical system built upon experience alone, and thor- 
oughly consistent in itself. As such it appears in its practical part 
as a Christianity which in its full profundity is renewed upon a 
scientific basis, to remain, as far as can be foreseen for the ages to 
come, the foundation of all scientific and religious thought of man- 
kind." 

Schopenhauer and Kant are both great, and we re- 
gard a study of their works as the indispensable school 
through which the philosophers of the future will have 
to go, but we cannot share the opinion of Professor 
Deussen, who, we are firmly convinced, overlooks the 
great errors which these masters of thought have pro- 
pounded. 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 

It is characteristic of the metaphysical philoso- 
phies that their conception of the thing-in-itself is 
hazy and mystical. It is a mere surd, undefinable 
and indescribable, endowed either with negative qual- 
ities or with the glamor of sentiment. It becomes in- 
effable and the object of religio-philosophical awe. A 
modern thinker, therefore, who deems it best to retain 
the idea of things-in-themselves, should first of all try 
to give precision to the term, and this has been at- 
tempted by Prof. Friedrich Jodl of Vienna. 

Professor Jodl, the author of an excellent and well- 
known History of Ethics, made the attempt to con- 
vince me of the desirability of retaining the term 
et thing-in-itself, " and his views are so well expressed, 
so comprehensive and concise, and at the same time 
so representative of a large class of powerful thinkers 
trained in the school of modern philosophical thought, 
that the philosophical public should be acquainted 
with his arguments, which will give the anti-meta- 
physical author a chance further to elucidate his own 
views in contrast to one of the ablest professors of 
philosophy of the present day. 

In answer to a letter of mine, Professor Jodl for- 
mulates his modernised view of the "thing-in-itself" 
as follows : 



102 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

"You are right. The thing-in-itself is a dangerous idea, — one 
that easily leads astray. But so long as we have no better expres- 
sion to represent the relation for which it stands we shall have to 
use it- You also accept the following three momenta : (i) Objec- 
tive existence or reality. (2) Effectiveness of Reality upon con- 
sciousness, i. e., sensation. (3) Effectiveness of sensation upon 
consciousness and reproduction of sensation in consciousness, i. e., 
representation. Nobody, however, can maintain that in sensation, 
and still less in representation, the whole of reality will appear in 
consciousness. First we learn from history what progress has been 
made in the cognition of reality and secondly it is obvious that we 
are infinitely far from an actual comprehension of reality. We 
have strong reasons to suspect that there are many processes in 
reality which in no way affect our sensibility and cannot enter into 
consciousness, and we know for sure that we do not comprehend 
— i. e., reconstruct from them assumed causes — many things, in- 
deed most things, which we observe in their effects. Our cogni- 
tion of nature, if we begin to construct, always leads us to some x. 
It may be doubted whether this x is an unknown or an unknow- 
able. In my opinion it is both — anyhow we cannot eliminate it. 

"I am convinced that many things which are unknown to-day 
and appear as unknowable will be known and knowable in a thou- 
sand years. But I doubt whether the total mass of the Unknow- 
able has been noticeably diminished. For the Unknowable is in- 
finite and the infinite if divided by any finite number can never 
produce a finite number. Every solved problem contains new and 
greater problems. What shall we call this ? I believe that the 
term " thing-in-itself " is after all the best expression. Whoever 
wants to turn a mystic on account of it cannot be prevented. This 
state of things can be brought out of existence by an act of violence 
only." 

It is most certainly true, as Professor Jo'dl says, 
that sensations do not depict the whole of reality. 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. IO3 

But why should they? Cognition is possible only by 
limiting the attention to a special point. Every sense- 
organ is an organ of abstraction. Every sense depicts 
the effects of reality in its own way and in this way 
alone. It may freely be granted that there are many 
processes in reality which do not affect our sensibil- 
ity. Yet there is nothing in reality which does not 
affect something in some way. If it did not, it could 
not be said to exist. The chemical rays of light do 
not affect our eye, they are invisible and were for that 
reason not noticed. But these rays are not without 
any effects. If we cannot observe them directly, we 
can invent sensitive plates or other instruments for 
observing their effects indirectly. Indirect observa- 
tion makes it possible that the limitation of our senses 
does not result in a limitation of knowledge. 

Says Professor Jodl : 

" Our cognition of nature if we begin to construct always leads 
us to some x." 

This sentence indicates that Professor Jodl's and 
our conception of cognition are different. Cognition 
is not a reconstruction of assumed causes ; it is a 
unification of our representative sensations or ideas. 
Something is again noticed, it is re-cognised, to be 
the same thing. Cognition is adaptation of new facts 
to our present stock of knowledge ; it is the proper 
arrangement of new data in our system of mental rep- 
resentations. Cognition, accordingly, is the reduction 
of the unknown to terms of the known. 



104 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

It is true that here and there and in many places 
wherever we turn we are confronted with an x ; but 
scientific investigation solves the problem and estab- 
lishes the value of one x after another. Professor 
Jodl obviously means an unknown quantity that can- 
not be reduced to a known quantity, viz., a surd, i. e., 
an x, the value of which cannot be determined. But 
is that possible? 

The positive conception of cognition is, as Kirch- 
hoff defines, "an exhaustive and most simple descrip- 
tion of facts." It is a reconstruction of facts or, as 
Mach says, Ein Nachbilden der Thatsachen. Cognition 
is based upon Anschaunnge?i ; it will lead to an ulti- 
mate x only in case we expect that cognition instead 
of being a description of facts will have to give us in- 
formation about how it happens that facts exist, how 
they originated out of nothing. 

Professor JodPs thing-in-itself is not outside of 
Space and Time (as is Kant's thing-in-itself), but it is 
the overwhelming infinitude of problems to be solved 
with which we cannot hope to get through even though 
our life lasted billions of light-years. Let me repeat 
here what I said in the second edition of Fundamental 
Problems : 

"A philosophy which starts from the positive data 
of experience, and arranges them in the system of a 
monistic conception of the world, will meet with many 
great problems, and in solving them will again and 
again be confronted with new problems. It will 



PROFESSOR FR1EDR1CH JODL. IO5 

always grapple with something that is not yet known. 
The unknown seems to expand before us like an in- 
finite ocean upon which the ship of knowledge ad- 
vances. But the unknown constantly changes into 
the known. We shall find no real unknowable wher- 
ever we proceed. The idea of the unknowable is like 
the horizon, — an optical illusion. The more we ad- 
vance, the farther it recedes. The unknowable is no 
reality; the unknowable can nowhere prevent knowl- 
edge, nor can the horizon debar a ship in her voyage 
from further progress" (p. 271). 

Man's knowledge has value as positive information 
concerning the facts he has to deal with, and the in- 
finitude of the not known, the infinitude of other 
problems and things which he will never face, is of 
no consequence whatever. Positivism commences and 
has to commence with the positive facts of the given 
experience and not with the infinitude of possibilities 
which lie beyond our horizon. Compare knowledge 
to property and suppose a man is to buy a farm. 
Shall we discourage him with the idea that the whole 
amount of soil on the surface of the earth and of other 
planets is infinite, and this infinitude of all existences 
if divided by his finite little possession can never re- 
sult in a finite numbers? Even if it were doubled, if 
it were multiplied a thousand times, it remains as 
good as nothing in comparison with the rest of the 
world which he cannot acquire. However, his pos- 



106 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

session is something to him, whatever the relation of 
infinite possibilities may be in proportion to it. 

The concept of infinitude serves a good purpose 
in its place, but we cannot use it for analogies in 
other fields or bring it in relation to concrete realities. 
We produce confusion and drop into mysticism as 
soon as we handle the idea of infinitude as if it were 
a positive thing. The infinite is a function which is 
mathematically expressed by Jr=oc, and whenever 
we bring anything in relation to the infinite we at 
once dwarf the greatest number no less than the 
smallest number into zero. 

Clearness of thought is the indispensable method 
of sound philosophy for constructing a positive world- 
conception, which in great outlines is a description of 
the facts of reality. By suffering mysticism as a legit- 
imate conception either in science or in philosophy, 
we enhance the interests of those who prefer the chia- 
roscuro of vague notions to clear thought. 

My criticism of Professor Jodl's view led to further 
correspondence on the subject which is here repro- 
duced. 

Professor Jodl wrote in reply to my arguments as 
follows : 

"A formal rejoinder to your criticism you can hardly expect 
from me, for, despite what you say against my remarks on the 
' thing-in-itself,' I am not sensible of any far-reaching difference 
between us. I agree perfectly with your definition of reality ; re- 
ality ( Wirklichkeit ) is effectiveness — relationship; and, therefore, 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. IO7 

a ' thing-in-itself,' in the sense of an isolated ' thing by itself,' is a 
self-contradiction. And one more thing is certain. We can only 
call a thing real provided it produces effects, not generally only, 
but upon us. But how you propose, even admitting all this, to 
eliminate the mooted x from our cognition, I cannot exactly under- 
stand, no more than I can accept your definition of cognition. 
The definitions of Mach and Kirchhoff which you cite are not 
philosophical definitions, that is, epistemological definitions, but 
propaedeutic or didactic definitions, by positive inquirers in spe- 
cial fields. In a philosophical sense I regard them as nothing 
more nor less than incorrect. It is quite right that we should re- 
gard a matter as explained scientifically when it has been shown 
to be a special case of a process already known ; but as philoso- 
phers, it is hoped, we shall not deceive ourselves by forgetting that 
this known phenomenon closely viewed is also something about 
which we know nothing. We agree to leave it out of account sim- 
ply because it is relatively near to our imaginations and of common 
occurrence. 

" Take the most general example. 

"When Newton saw the law of falling bodies in the central 
motion cf the moon about the earth, the motion of the planets was 
' explained,' and astronomers were able to ' describe ' that motion 
in Kirchhoff' s sense as precisely as possible, that is, by means of 
mathematical principles. But what really takes place in gravita- 
tion, whether it is a general property of matter, whether it is the 
effect of mechanical causes, — on that point, as you know, people 
are still, or rather, are again, racking their brains. In other 
words, this so-called ' explanation ' leads us to a phenomenon 
which we are unable to trace back to one that is better known, 
because our powers of representing it fail us, because it is not 
made up of any ulterior elements for us, and is therefore called an 
'elementary fact.' Now this signifies simply that we cannot pene- 
trate further here ; for us this is a datum. But shall we make 
ourselves believe that because we cannot see further there actually 



Io8 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

is nothing further here ? Gravitation is real. Surely, that means 
not only that it produces effects, but also that it is effected. And 
so it is with all 'elementary' facts. Everywhere the lines of the 
co-ordinate system in which we draw up our picture of the world 
carry us into realms of obscurity. We can refuse — and that is the 
meaning of positivism — to fill up this realm of obscurity with 
vague pictures of fancy and idealistic speculations. But we need 
not on that account believe that the region of light which we sur- 
vey is the universe. 

" I would willingly discard the name ' thing-in-itself ' if it was 
at all suspected that any sort of ineradicable transcendentalism, 
dualism, or mysticism were ensconced behind it. With such stow- 
aways I will have nothing to do. I am a convinced upholder of 
the monistic view of the world, and only mean that an honest con- 
fession of the limitations of our knowledge injures in no respect 
the cause of monism." 

The following was my reply to Professor Jodl : 
"Many thanks for your valuable lines. Your ex- 
position in defence of the x in the world, it seems to 
me, hits the point, and here apparently lies the differ- 
ence between our views, so far as a difference obtains 
at all, with all agreements on other important points. 
I regard the acceptance of the Mach and Kirchhoff 
definition, or rather conception, of cognition in the 
philosophical domain, as very important for consti- 
tuting a sound positivism. And why? Because this 
conception renders clear the situation ; because it 
overcomes the ignorabimus theory of agnosticism. 
Knowledge is not a distinct thing in the world. It is 
a fact which is intercatenated with other facts. It has 
a cause and serves a purpose. Knowledge develops 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. IOg 

in organisms for the purpose of their adaptation to 
surroundings. The purpose of knowledge is found in 
action. If an organised being strives for something, 
it constructs through a combination of representative 
images a plan for action. An organised being is in 
need of such representations, which denote things in 
such an analogous and corresponding way, that the 
subjective image and the objective thing are analog- 
ous and remain in a correct relation. Knowledge, 
therefore, is a portrayal not only in sense-images but 
also in thought-symbols, for the purpose of regulating 
action. It is a representative remodelling of things. 

"Knowledge is the product of cognition, it con- 
sists in the lucidity and correctness of representa- 
tions. Cognition is that mental process through which 
we grasp the sameness of several phenomena. When 
Newton comprised the motion of the moon and the 
fall of a stone into one common formula, we were put 
in possession of a comprehension and explanation of 
these phenomena. They are now plain to us, and we 
can formulate their actions in exact terms and with 
mathematical precision, which can practically be ap- 
plied as a basis for action. So far, good ! I do not 
believe that on this subject there is any difference of 
opinion; but now you add, that this conception of 
knowledge and cognition is quite allowable for propae- 
deutic and didactic purposes in the various specialities 
of science, but in a philosophical sense, it is wrong. 

"I agree with you that it is right to concede hon- 



IIO THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

estly the limitations of our knowledge. We know 
comparatively very little of the world which in its in- 
finity surrounds us. The circle of light visible to us 
is by no means the universe. This consideration, 
however, lies in another field, and I have never thought 
of combating this kind of agnosticism, which I call 
'the agnosticism of modesty.' I maintain that knowl- 
edge consists in a correct representation of things, and 
I cannot understand what knowledge could otherwise be. 
Suppose we knew everything knowable, our knowl- 
edge would be an orderly system of representations; 
there would be formulas, with the assistance of which 
we could under all circumstances predetermine the 
course of events. That the existence of facts is very 
wonderful cannot be denied; and indeed in the same 
way the existence of all facts, without any exception, 
is equally wonderful. The existence of the world, 
such as it is, a cosmos arranged according to law, re- 
mains grand and overwhelming even to him who has 
through and through understood its harmonious or- 
der. If that is your mysticism, I adopt it. I have no 
objection to this mysticism of sentiment. On the con- 
trary, I endorse it. (See Fundamental Problems, page 
157, and Homilies of Science, the chapter on 'The Value 
of Mysticism,' page 52.) This kind of mysticism is 
thoroughly in accord with clearness of reasoning and 
with the strictest precision of sound knowledge. 

"Now, if knowledge is not mere representation, 
not a portrayal of things, not a description for the 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. Ill 

purpose of regulating our action, pray tell me, what 
can it be? If we call this kind of knowledge scientific 
knowledge, what do you mean by philosophical knowl- 
edge? I must confess that I do not know how you 
can answer this question. 

"Schopenhauer says in a similar spirit: 'Phys- 
ically, to be sure, everything, but metaphysically, 
nothing is explainable.' But what is a metaphysical 
explanation? 

"The sole answer which I can imagine is, that a 
metaphysical explanation expects to receive an an- 
swer as to why the world exists at all. This question 
may mean either, 'How did the world originate out 
of nothing?' or 'What is the innermost nature of 
things by dint of which they exist? ' The former ques- 
tion finds its solution in the law of the conservation 
of matter 1 and energy; the latter is nothing but an 
inquiry into the most general feature of being. 

"The former is the question after the first cause; 
the latter after the ultimate raison d'etre of the uni- 
verse. The ontological problem originates by a con- 
fusion of these two questions. 

"My answer would be, that the ontological prob- 
lem is illegitimate. We apply the law of causation 
where we should inquire for the ultimate raison d'etre. 
Ontological causality, so called, leads to the formula- 

lWe here include ether under the term "matter." Supposing the chem- 
ical elements such as we find them in experience were due to a condensation 
of ether, the law of the conservation of matter would not be overthrown, at 
least not in the sense in which it has been held by physicists. 



112 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

tion of problems which are unsolvable, and to ques- 
tions which are unanswerable. 

11 Cognition, the method of which consists in com- 
prehending samenesses, ultimately leads to, and nat- 
urally ends in, a universal conception, which repre- 
sents all the features common to all existence — the 
idea of being in general, of existence, or whatever we 
may call it. On the other hand, the law of cause and 
effect has not in the same sense a natural limit. We 
can go backward into infinity, and must again and 
again inquire for a cause of the cause. Only by com- 
mitting the error of treating the law of reasoning after 
the analogy of the law of cause and effect, we can in- 
quire for the raison d'etre of the ultimate raison d'etre, 
and expect to find a still more general law than the 
universal law. We want a thought-symbol which would 
subsume the all-comprising thought-symbol of the 
universal under a still wider generalisation. Figura- 
tively speaking, we ask, after having found the centre 
of the circle, 'Where is the middle of the centre?' 

"As soon as we become conscious of the truth 
that all knowledge is representation, the ontological 
problem, so called, disappears and is recognised as 
an illegitimate problem. 

"You say, 'we can refuse to fill up this realm of 
obscurity with vague pictures of fancy and idealistic 
speculations,' and you regard this as 'the meaning 
of positivism.' This, indeed, is the meaning of the 
French positivism represented by Comte and Littre\ 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 113 

to whom unknowable essences have still a real exist- 
ence ; but this realm of obscurity disappears when the 
sham problem has been recognised as a sham prob- 
lem. From my standpoint there is not even a need 
of filling the realm of obscurity which has a fictitious 
existence, originating merely through vague specula- 
tions on the ontological problem. 

"The so-called ontological problem which inquires 
after the ultimate raison d'etre of existence as though 
the universality of being could be the effect of a cause, 
leads to dualism. To be sure, your thoughts are 
thoroughly monistic, but you commit yourself to a 
dualistic conception when you say : 

"Gravitation is real: surely that means not only that it pro- 
duces effects, but also that it is effected." 

"Here I cannot follow you. The gravitating stone 
produces effects. It is active itself. The stone in its 
connection with the universe is doing work, and I do 
not find myself necessitated to seek for anything meta- 
physical behind the stone, by which 'it is effected.' 
Gravity does the work, and by gravity I mean the in- 
herent quality of the stone's mass. Shall we assume 
that there is something else beyond the real facts in 
which we must seek the cause of gravity's gravita- 
tion? 

"I repeat once more, I fully recognise the im- 
mensity, the inexhaustibility, the grandeur, and the 
wondrousness of the existence of the world in all its 
details. I only object to recognising (paradoxically 



114 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

speaking) that kind of cognition which never can lead 
to cognition." 

Professor Jodl wrote back: 

"I have studied your long letter of February 17th with the 
deepest interest and with genuine satisfaction. As I had foreseen, 
it makes plain our essential agreement in a number of important 
points, and by your exceedingly lucid presentation puts me in a 
position to clear up the only point in which my view appeared to 
you dubious. 

"You ask me what I understand by ' a knowledge that is not 
simply imitation and reproduction with a view to regulating con- 
duct.' 

"You exclude, as I think, in a very apt manner, the question 
concerning the ground of existence from the knowable. I would 
subscribe to all that, word for word. I feel no need whatever of 
filling out to. fiera ra tyvGma with pictures of fancy ; and an agnos- 
ticism and positivism that should only be a golden bridge for mys- 
ticism, is in the highest degree repugnant to me. The Comtian 
formula, Vivre au grand jour , has far more importance for me 
as a theoretical than as a practical principle. 

"But what, then, is my objection to your position, you will 
say. I can tell you that now, simply enough, in the words of peo- 
ple who are much profounder than I, and save, in doing so, paper 
and postage. I will ask you to take up Locke's Essay Co?icern- 
i?ig Human Under stattding. First, in Book 4, Chapter n, para- 
graph 8, you will find a full elaboration of that organic teleology 
which you emphasise. If, afterwards, you will read Chapter 3 of 
the same work, then Chapter 6, especially from paragraph 5 on- 
wards, comparing with that Book 2, Chapter 23, passim, and Book 
3, Chapter 6, paragraph 9, you will have pretty much all that my 
agnosticism signifies ; particularly, if you will take the slight addi- 
tional trouble of turning to Hume's Inquiry Concerning Htiman 
Understanding and of reading over, sections 4 and 5, ' Sceptical 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 115 

Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding.' It 
would be impossible for me to state more plainly what I mean 
than is done there. You will not believe, that I could hope, by 
means of any sort of higher speculation, which would be synony- 
mous with higher folly, to smuggle in through a back door the 
knowledge there declared by a critical investigation of the nature 
of reason to be impossible. I accept completely your ' agnosticism 
of modesty,' but would have the expression understood in its ex- 
tensive as well as its intensive sense. The philosopher cannot 
know things differently from what science does ; but he must 
always keep before his mind the critical limitations and value of 
this knowledge. And in this sense only does the Mach-Kirchhoff 
definition appear to me insufficient. 

' ' I believe that we now agree perfectly ; for I feel sure that 
you will hold the expositions of Locke and Hume on the nature 
and limits of knowledge to be irrefutable." 

Now we cannot deny that the passages cited by 
Professor Jodl contain much sound reasoning, and we 
children of the latter part of the nineteenth century 
are much indebted to our predecessors of the end of 
the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. But it seems to me that there are several 
propositions of Locke and Hume to which we must 
take exception. I, for one, cannot regard their argu- 
ments as " irrefutable, " and many of their expressions 
need a restatement. We confine ourselves to the most 
important points. 

locke's unknowable essence of things. 

Locke says in his Essay Concer7iing Human Under- 
standing : 



Il6 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

' ' The nominal essence bounds the species — not the real es- 
sence which we know not. — III., vi, 7-9. 

" Nor, indeed, can we rank and sort things, and consequently 
(which is the end of sorting) denominate them by their real es- 
sences because we know them not. — III , vi, 9. 

' ' No proposition can be known to be true where the essence 
of each species mentioned is not known. — IV., vi, 4. 

"This more particularly concerns substances For, how 

can we be sure that this or that quality is in gold when we know 
n«t what is or is not gold ? since in this way of speaking nothing 
is gold but what partakes of an essence, which we not knowing 
cannot know where it is or is not, and so cannot be sure that any 
parcel of matter in the world is or is not in this sense gold ; being 
incurably ignorant whether it has or has not that which makes 
anything to be called 'gold,' i. e., that real essence of gold whereof 
we have no idea at all : this being as impossible for us to know, as 
it is for a blind man to tell in what flower the color of a pansy is 
or is not to be found, whilst he has no idea of the color of a pansy 
at all." — IV., vi, 497. 

Strange how firmly Locke clings to his idea of 
substance, although he is quite conscious of the con- 
fusion into which it implicates his reasoning. He 
says (II., xxiii., 2): 

"If any one will examine himself concerning his notion of 
pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it 
at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such 
qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; 
which qualities are commonly called 'accidents.' If any one 
should be asked, ' What is the subject wherein color or weight in- 
heres?' he would have nothing to say but, 'The solid extended 
parts.' And if he were demanded, ' What is it that solidity and 
extension inhere in ? ' he would not be in a much better case than 
the Indian before mentioned, who, saying that the world was sup- 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 117 

ported by a great elephant, was asked, what the elephant rested 
on ? to which his answer was, 'A great tortoise; ' but being again 
pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, 
replied — something, he knew not what. And thus here, as in all 
other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct 
ideas, we talk like children ; who, being questioned what such a 
thing is which they know not readily give this satisfactory answer, 
— that it is something ; which in truth signifies no more, when so 
used, either by children or men, but that they know not what ; 
and that the thing they pretend to know and talk of, is what they 
have no distinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, 
and in the dark. The idea, then, we have, to which we give the 
general name 'substance,' being nothing but the supposed, but 
unknown, support of those qualities we find existing, which we 
imagine cannot subsist si?ie re substante, ' without something to 
support them,' we call that support substantia; which, according 
to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, ' standing un- 
der, ' or 'upholding.' 

Locke defines body as "an extended, solid sub- 
stance," and soul as "a substance that thinks." Had 
not the idea "substance" been better omitted alto- 
gether? Instead of peopling all the domains of exist- 
ence with unknown substances, would it not be enough 
to say that body is extension and solidity, and a man's 
soul is his thinking? Locke's philosophy shows al- 
ready an anti-metaphysical trend, so much so that the 
natural solution of the difficulty that this mythical 
substance is a redundant and gratuitous invention, 
seems to suggest itself in many passages, and the 
Bishop of Worcester actually accused Locke of "al- 
most having discarded substance out of the reason- 



Il8 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

able part of the world. " Anent this accusation, Locke 
replies that he does "not know what to plead to," 
and quotes a string of sentences in which he asserts 
the existence of substance, the real nature of which is 
unknown. As to complex ideas, such as horse or stone, 
which are collections of several simple ideas, Locke 
says (II., xxiii., Note B): 

" Because we cannot conceive how they should subsist alone, 
nor one in another, we suppose them existing in and supported by 
some common subject, which support we denote by the name sub- 
stance ; though it be certain we have no clear or distinct idea of 
that thing we suppose a support." 

Locke declares that the uncertainty which hovers 
as a Damocles sword over knowledge, rendering it 
all through purely phenomenal, need not alarm nor 
disturb us, for "the relative certainty is as great as 
our condition needs." Our "evidence is as great as 
we can desire, being as certain to us as our pleasure 
or pain, i. e., happiness or misery, beyond which we 
have no concernment, either of knowing or being." 

The consistent result of Locke's position is a sus- 
pension of judgment on almost every question of im- 
portance ; for instance, the existence of spirits is to 
Locke a matter of faith (IV., xi., 12), "however true 
it may be that all the intelligent spirits that God ever 
created do still exist, yet it can never make a part of 
our certain knowledge." We have to abandon all at- 
tempts at demonstrating their existence and even at 
investigating the matter. 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. Iig 



HUMES SCEPTICISM. 



The chapters cited by Professor Jodl from David 
Hume {Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 
Sec. IV. and V.) are of great importance, and we ad- 
vise every lover of philosophy to study them carefully 
and critically, especially Section IV., which is entitled 
"Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the 
Understanding." 1 This chapter contains in nuce the 
fallacies of both the agnosticism and the metaphysi- 
cism of to-day. 

Hume's scepticism is in itself a good thing, for he 
has put his finger on the sore spot of the problem of 
philosophy; Hume finds that all our reasoning con- 
cerning matter of fact is based upon our notion of 
causation. Our notion of causation again is based 
upon experience. But he continues: "What is the 
foundation of all conclusions from experience?" He 
adds : "This implies a new question which may be of 
more difficult solution and explication," and comes 
finally to the conclusion that as the difficulty is un- 
surmountable, we can have no other than "a negative 
answer." He says : 

"Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is 
the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite 
of our endeavors to elude or avoid it." 

What are Hume's arguments for this most dis- 
tressing conclusion which, if it were true, would nec- 

lEd. L. A. Selby-Bigge, M. A., Oxford, 1S94. pp. 25-39. 



120 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

essarily leave a gap in every scientific world-concep 
tion? 

Hume maintains that our knowledge of causation 
"is not in any instance attained by reasonings a priori, 
but arises entirely from experience" (p. 29). He de- 
clares : 

"The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed 
cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the 
effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can 
never be discovered in it." 

And the gist of his arguments is summed up in 
the following statements : 

"That all arguments concerning existence are founded on the 
relation of cause and effect. 

"That our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from 
experience. 

"That all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the 
supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. 

" To endeavor, therefore, the proof of this last supposition by 
probable arguments, or arguments regarding existence, must be 
evidently going in a circle, and taking that for granted, which is 
the very point in question." 

Hume sees pretty clearly the ultimate conclusions 
of his theory, which are nothing less than a denial of 
the authority of reason. He declares in a long foot- 
note on pages 44-45 that the distinction between rea- 
son and experience, useful though it may be, is at 
bottom "erroneous" and "at least superficial." 

All our reasoning is based, according to Hume, 
upon a petitio principii. That a certain cause has 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 121 

always produced a special effect in the past is no rea- 
son why the same cause will produce the same effect 
in the future. Hume says : 

" If you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reason- 
ing, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connection be- 
tween these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a 
medium which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if 
indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that me- 
dium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension ; and it is in- 
cumbent on those to produce it who assert that it really exists, 
and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact.' 

Hume presents his theory with great modesty and 
at the same time with extraordinary assurance. He 
says : 

"The best expedient to prevent this confusion, is to be mod- 
est in our pretensions; and even to discover the difficulty ourselves 
before it is objected to us. By this means we may make a kind of 
merit of our very ignorance." 

Hume proposes the question as much for the sake 
of information, as with an intention of raising difficul- 
ties, keeping, as he says, his "mind open to instruc- 
tion, if any one will vouchsafe to bestow it upon" 
him ; but having endeavored to show that none of the 
branches of human knowledge can afford an argument 
that might have escaped him, he feels confident that 
his scepticism is impregnable. He says : 

" This negative argument must certainly, in process of time, 
become altogether convincing, if many penetrating and able phi- 
losophers shall turn their enquiries this way and no one be ever 



122 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

able to discover any connecting proposition or intermediate step 
which supports the understanding in this conclusion." 

In the course of time many able thinkers have 
adopted Hume's scepticism, and by a kind of com- 
mon consensus his negative solution has developed 
into a philosophical dogma which has acted like a 
bane upon thought and is still blockading the pro- 
gress of philosophy. 

There is one strange thing about Hume which 
should have made him suspicious of his own proposi- 
tion. His theory and his practice do not agree, and 
he feels that his philosophy is sicklied over with the 
pale cast of thought. He says in his Treatise of Hu- 
man nature, IV., 2, p. 218 : 

"This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the 
senses, is a malady." 

To escape the evil effects of scepticism, Hume's 
advice is as follows : 

"As the sceptical doubt arises naturally from a profound and 
intense reflection on those subjects, it always increases the farther 
we carry our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to 
it. Carelessness and inattention alone can afford us any remedy. 
For this reason I rely entirely upon them." 

With all due deference to the keenness of the 
great Scotchman, we cannot say that a philosophy 
whose sole remedy for a malady of reason lies in 
"carelessness and inattention" breathes the spirit of 
genuine inquiry or can make any claim of being "ir- 
refutable." 



PROFESSOR FRIEDR1CH JODL. I 23 

Hume proposes not to make any use of his scepti- 
cism when dealing with questions of real life. So em- 
phatic is he in the inapplicability, and that means a 
practical rejection, of his negativism that he says : 

" None but a fool or madman will ever pretend to dispute the 
authority of experience." 

Experience, according to Hume's theory, is a chaos 
of isolated items, which can never acquire authority, 
but in practice he considers the denial of its authority 
as madness. What Hume here calls " authority of 
experience" is nothing but his vigorously repudiated 
scientific certitude, the method of which, commonly 
called reason, is gained through a systematisation of 
experience. 

Hume feels the sting of his inconsistency, and he 
explains his position by the following consideration : 

"My practice, you say, refutes my doubts. But you mistake 
the purport of my question. As an agent. I am quite satisfied in 
the point ; but as a philosopher, who has some share of curiosity, 
I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the foundation of this 
inference. No reading, no enquiry, has yet been able to remove 
my difficulty, or give me satisfaction in a matter of such impor- 
tance. Can I do better than propose the difficulty to the public, 
even though, perhaps, I have small hopes of obtaining a solution ? 
We shall at least, by this means, be sensible of our ignorance, if 
we do not augment our knowledge." 

Considering Hume's arguments, I freely grant that 
all our knowledge is ultimately derived from experi- 
ence, but my definition of experience differs from the 



124 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

traditional notion. When Hume speaks of experi- 
ence, he always enumerates a number of isolated 
cases, and calls cause and effect "two objects follow- 
ing one another." Kant, in close agreement with 
Hume's conception, calls experience "the raw mate- 
rial of our sensuous impressions" and carefully ex- 
cludes from it all purely formal knowledge and ra- 
tional judgments. Now there is no doubt that for- 
mal knowledge, be it geometrical, arithmetical, logi- 
cal, or purely rational of any kind, cannot be derived 
from the sense-element of experience, after we have 
carefully eliminated from experience the quality of 
form. If, however, we understand by experience the 
whole effect of events upon sentiency, including both 
qualities, form and sensibility, we shall see that all 
the formal sciences including pure reason, our con- 
ception of the purely formal (generally misnamed the 
a priori}, the notion of causation, arithmetic, geom- 
etry, algebra, and logic can very well be derived from 
experience. It is quite true, as Kant convincingly 
proves, that the purely formal sciences are ideal; 
they are ideal constructions built up in our mind: 
but the material out of which we have raised these 
magnificent structures, which are the notions of pure 
forms in various domains, — pure space, progress in 
time of units of counting, mere thought relations such 
as genus and species, etc., etc., — have been furnished 
us by experience. Our notions of pure form are ab- 
stractions which we have derived by limiting our at- 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 125 

tention to pure relations and excluding the things 
among which they obtain. 

By regarding experience as a number of isolated 
sense-impressions without coherence, Hume starts 
with a wrong idea of causation. Instead of analysing 
some phenomenon, he makes a synthesis of what he 
is pleased to call cause and effect, and finds no neces- 
sary connection among them. He should first have 
investigated the facts and then explained the meaning 
of the words cause and effect; but he takes their 
meaning for granted, and since this meaning is noth- 
ing but a confused notion of unvariable succession, it 
is natural that the whole argument of Hume's scepti- 
cism is built upon sand. 

The law of causation is a purely formal law, and 
it can justly claim the same validity as all mathemati- 
cal and logical theorems. It is at bottom the same 
law as the law of the conservation of matter and en- 
ergy, which simply means that nothing can originate 
out of nothing, and that all processes are transforma- 
tions. The phenomena which we observe are chan- 
ges, not creations and not annihilations. It is true 
that cause and effect are radically different, but they 
are not without definite connections. Cause and effect 
are not "objects following one another," as Hume 
says, but interrelated events. 

Poison is not a cause, but the act of taking poison; 
neither is a dead mouse the effect, but the death of 
the mouse. Every cause is a motion, an act or an 



126 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

event, which in a given system of conditions through 
a disturbance of their equilibrium produces other mo- 
tions, acts, or events, ultimately resulting in some 
definite change, called the effect. 

When we inquire for the reason why the cause 
takes effect, we want to know the natural law accord- 
ing to which a given agent acts uuder given condi- 
tions. Natural laws formulate in exact terms the 
qualities of things and are nothing more nor less than 
descriptions. The progress of science warrants the 
assumption of regarding all natural laws as forming 
one great system in which the more particular laws 
are applications of the more general laws to peculiar 
conditions, and all the general laws form various as- 
pects of the universal order of nature which is at bot- 
tom the same as the simple truths of the formal sci- 
ences, such as i -f- i =2, or the angles of equilateral 
triangles are equal, the intrinsic necessity of which 
can easily be understood. 

Hume's conception of causation is so confused 
that he constantly mixes up the ideas cause and rea- 
son, and speaks of "general causes" and "ultimate 
causes," when he means reasons of reasons, requiring 
as an answer more general and universal laws. 

Our expectation that the future will resemble the 
past is based upon the idea that every event that hap- 
pens is due to a change of place. The state of things 
and their actions may become very different from 
what they are now, and conditions may arise which 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 1 27 

will produce unprecedented constellations, so that 
the same causes will no longer be attended by the 
same effects. But whatever may happen, events must 
always be due to cause, and will be the result of a 
mere transformation. 

The medium which Hume could not find and 
which as he says is required to avoid the vicious 
circle of founding causation upon experience and ex- 
perience upon causation, is contained in the elimi- 
nated portion of experience, which in his days was 
called the a priori, and which we call the purely for- 
mal or the rational. The surrounding world, through 
contact with which experience originates, is not like 
a bag of peas, a disconnected number of isolated ob- 
jects ; the world, our own subjectivity included, is a 
system of relations which in their general features 
(or, as Germans would say, in their Gesetzmassigkeif) 
are universal. We can describe them as what we call 
the laws of form. 

Our ideal systems of purely formal relations can 
be used for reference in measuring and counting, and 
thus the purely formal sciences become the tools of 
investigation, without which science would be impos- 
sible. Our methods of investigation, which include 
counting, measuring, and the notion of causality, 
have been derived from experience ; they are the for- 
mal elements of experience reduced to system and 
making possible a higher kind of experience, science, 



128 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

which is methodical observation, experiment, and a 
systematic description of experience. 

This is no vicious circle, but an evolution from 
lowly beginnings to a higher condition, and every 
stone of the structure of the philosophy of science, 
which sets forth and explains the principles of scien- 
tific inquiry, rests upon a safe foundation, the ulti- 
mate basis being experience. The medium which, as 
Hume said, passed his comprehension, is the system- 
atisation of the formal elements of experience in ideal 
reconstructions for a so-called a priori application to 
future experiences. And we are so sure of the reli- 
ability of this medium, that, as Hume himself con- 
fesses, " none but a fool or madman will ever pretend 
to dispute it or reject it as the great guide of human 
life." 

Reason, in our conception, is systematised experi- 
ence ; it is an ideal and methodical reconstruction of 
the relational element in experience. We agree ac- 
cordingly with Hume when he declares that there is 
no reason without experience. But we cannot grant 
that all reasoning is mere custom, and that therefore 
pure reason possesses no authority save that of cus- 
tom derived from a haphazard accumulation of many 
experiences. 

Hume misunderstands the very nature of reason. 
Reason is not a collection of many fortuitous observa- 
tions, but the quintessence of their necessary inter- 
relations extracted from experience. Reason is not 



PROFESSOR FRIEDRICH JODL. 1 29 

one fact among other facts, not a faculty besides other 
faculties, such as sensation, but a method, and on the 
reliability of this method the very possibility of sci- 
ence depends. If we could make no other inferences 
than such as are drawn from disconnected experiences 
and not from the systematisation of experience which 
is called reason, all our arguments would indeed be 
vain, the conjunction of cause and effect would be 
' 'arbitrary and casual," and philosophy simply the 
recognition of the utter hopelessness of scientific as- 
pirations. 

Hume concludes his arguments with this remark : 

"If I be wrong, I must acknowledge myself to be indeed a 
very backward scholar." 

We deny the logic even of this last proposition. 
Hume may have been and indeed he unquestionably 
was a great scholar and a keen philosopher. But the 
fact that a man is a scholar does not make him infal- 
lible. Agassiz was a great scientist, and yet he was 
mistaken on the most important problem of his sci- 
ence. The most penetrating thinker may err in his 
solution of the burning question of his day, while 
less able minds may hit the truth, which is either due 
to a greater clearness of comprehension, or may some- 
times happen because they are less bewildered by the 
knowledge of too much trivial detail. 

We cannot say that Hume's expositions go to the 
bottom of the problem. He sees the problem but ■ 
does not contribute to its elucidation. He is seeking 



I30 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

its solution, so far as the looseness of his terms allows 
him to do so, but has a peculiar instinct of avoiding 
a discussion of those things which would have afforded 
him the best assistance in solving the problem. 

Hume's errors have become so popular that they 
permeate even to-day our whole intellectual atmo- 
sphere and exercise a baneful influence upon the 
minds of many prominent thinkers. How injurious 
the effect of this anodyne is may be gathered not only 
from the popularity which Mr. Spencer's lukewarm 
agnosticism enjoys, but also from such cases as the 
late Prof. Romanes's Thoughts on Religion. Hume's 
negativism has produced a stagnancy in the philo- 
sophical world which prevents the mass of our best 
thinkers from understanding the needs of the time 
and finding the solution of the great religious prob- 
lem that now agitates the world. The propositions 
made in these pages are still a voice crying in the 
wilderness, but the time will come, and is near at 
hand, when their truth will be recognised in both the 
churches and the universities. Professional philoso- 
phers must bestir themselves lest they be left behind 
in the general advance of the sciences; and the clergy, 
when pressed harder and harder by unmetaphysical 
scepticism, will find in the author's anti-metaphysical 
philosophy a panoply for the defence of religion, — 
not of their antiquated creeds, but of a regenerated 
faith which has been purified in the furnace of science. 



PROFESSOR ERNST MACH. 131 



PROFESSOR ERNST MACH. 

Prof. Ernst Mach, of Vienna, is one of the most 
representative antimetaphysical philosophers, and he 
expressly entitles his introductory remarks to his 
thoughtful book on The Analysis of the Sensations 
"Antimetaphysical." Professor Mach, accordingly, 
cannot be suspected of being a metaphysical philoso- 
pher; and if we conclude our discussion of the Meta- 
physical Residue in modern thought with an inquisi- 
tion of one'of his propositions, it is more because we 
disagree with his antimetaphysical views than that we 
regard him as metaphysical. 

Professor Mach insists on making a difference in 
our scientific terminology between the description of 
real facts and the scaffolding which is built up around 
our knowledge of facts in order to make the latter 
comprehensible. Scientific nomenclature is full of 
thought-constructions which are pure theories and 
not facts. They are useful for the purpose of bridg- 
ing the gaps of our knowledge ; but without ventur- 
ing into hypotheses, we could make no progress in 
our comprehension of nature. 

We grant that science (as all knowledge) is repre- 
sentation, ein Nachbilden der Thatsachen. Conceptions 
are mental constructs (as we may appropriately call 
them) ; they are models built in imitation of the real- 
ities which they purport to portray. But there is one 



132 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

point in which we cannot follow Professor Mach. He 
regards the mechanical aspect (describing the change 
of form) not as we do, as a universal aspect of reality, 
but as one abstraction of reality among many other 
abstractions, and he considers it as on the same level 
with such notions as electricity or chemical affinity. 
He regards the reduction of all physical processes to 
motions as a chimerical ideal, and declares : 

"It is simply an accident of history that the development of 
the principle of energy in physics was not connected with the 
practical applications of electricity." 

According to Mach the mechanical aspect appears 
to be more clear to us merely because we are more 
familiar with it. He says in his article "On the Prin 
ciple of the Conservation of Energy" {Popular Scien- 
tific Lectures, p. 151): 

' ' Mechanical events as simple motions in space and time best 
admit of observation and pursuit by the help of our highly organ- 
ised senses. We reproduce mechanical processes almost without 
effort in our imagination. Pressure as a circumstance that pro- 
duces motion is very familiar to us from daily experience. All 
changes which the individual personally produces in his environ- 
ment or humanity brings about by means of the arts in the world, 
are affected through the instrumentality of the ??iotions. Almost 
of necessity, therefore, motion appears to us as the most important 
physical factor. Moreover, mechanical properties may be discov- 
ered in all physical events. The sounding bell trembles, the 
heated body expands, the electrified body attracts other bodies. 
Why, therefore, should we not attempt to grasp all events under 
their mechanical aspect, since that is so easily apprehended and 



PROFESSOR ERNST MACH. 133 

most accessible to observation and measurement ? In fact, no ob- 
jection is to be made to the attempt to elucidate the properties of 
physical events by mechanical analogies. 

" Granted that we had a perfect knowledge of the mechanical 
processes of nature, could we and should we, for that reason, put 
out of the tvorld all other processes that we do not understand? 
On this principle it would be really the simplest course to deny 
the existence of the whole world." 

The fact is that of molar motion we have a visual 
image, but our ideas concerning electricity and com- 
binations by chemical affinity are mysterious, and 
their actions remain unintelligible until we can ex- 
plain them by analogous events in molar mechanics. 
It is no accident but a matter of necessity that we 
cannot help trying to understand all phenomena as 
transformations, or changes of place; and if we are 
unwilling to consider this state of things as due to 
the nature of objective existence, we should have to 
say, such is the constitution of sentient beings, and 
especially of the thinking subject which has acquired 
the faculty of reason, that it must explain changes as 
motions which produce new constellations. 

In our opinion the mechanical aspect is a more 
general feature of reality than electrical and chemical 
phenomena, all of which belong to the same category 
of objective nature. The attempts of physicists to 
understand the latter as a species of the former by 
considering them as molecular mechanics is no acci- 
dent, but the necessary outcome of the natural rela- 
tion that obtains among these abstractions. That 



134 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

class of phenomena to which our sensory organs are, 
as it were, adapted so as to show them in the focus 
of our direct observation naturally appear as molar 
motions, and we cannot help thinking that such more 
subtle changes in nature, as for instance chemical 
combinations, are of the same character, only on a 
smaller scale. We cannot help thinking that if the 
smallest units of chemistry were rational beings, mo- 
lecular mechanics would be to them such changes of 
place as we call molar motions, for the sensorium of 
these tiny creatures would be so adjusted that the 
changes taking place in the molecules would be in 
the field of their direct observation. Our molar mo- 
tion would be to them what the cosmical motions of 
the stars are to us : they would not be directly observ- 
able, and any knowledge of them could only be in- 
ferred by a complex process of reasoning. But though 
the nature of the cosmical motions is quite different 
from the pull and push of human machinery, and 
though the mysterious interrelations of the atoms in 
molecules are again different from either, all three 
kinds of processes possess certain features in common 
which are conditioned by space and the laws of form, 
all three are transformations, i. e., changes of form 
involving displacements, viz., a new arrangement of 
their parts in space. 

We do not regard it as purely accidental that me- 
chanical laws are more satisfactory explanations than 
formulas of electrical or chemical actions. The latter 



PROFESSOR ERNST MACH. 1 35 

are mere names of unexplained processes ; and they 
will remain mysterious to us until we understand the 
play of the forces, or, if we regard them as configura- 
tions of bodily units, how the various particles of 
matter move about according to purely formal laws. 
That there should be motions too minute for direct 
sense-observation is exactly what we must expect, 
and there is no reason to* regard them as essentially 
different from transformations that are visible. 

Professor Mach (and with him his ingenious dis- 
ciple Professor Ostwald 1 ) rejects the atomic theory. 
So do I ; but I object only to the belief that atoms 
are concrete realities. I do not regard the atomic 
theory a fallacy. The term "atom " has been invented 
by chemists as a help for thinking the equivalence of 
the weight of the elements which always combine in 
definite proportions. In my opinion the word has no 
sense if applied to other phenomena, and should least 
of all be introduced into psychology. It has not been 
abstracted from psychological phenomena nor has it 
been invented for describing them. There is accord- 
ingly no probability that it can find there any appro- 
priate application. We might as well expect that 
mathematical terms, such as lines, points, circles, 
etc., are applicable in psychology. The idea of con- 
scious circles or points cannot in my mind be more 

1 Professor Ludwig Boltzmann's criticism of this anti-mechanical con- 
ception in The Monist, Vol. XL, No. 2, and Vol. XII., No. 1, is mainly directed 
against Ostwald who carries Mach s theories to extremes, or, to say the least 
states them very rigorously. 



I36 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

absurd than that of conscious atoms. The rule must 
be observed that we can use abstractions made for a 
special purpose for that purpose only ; they will not 
serve any other purpose as well. It is true that they 
are often employed as analogies, but in such cases we 
must bear in mind that we are dealing with mere 
analogies. 

Thus the term "atom" 'if considered as a Hilfs- 
construction is a legitimate notion in chemistry. It 
has been invented to assist us in thinking some real 
facts, viz., certain proportions in which the elements 
combine. If we understand by atom the actual fact 
and nothing more, we become conscious of the equiv- 
ocal character of these infinitesimal particles of exist- 
ence and are forced to concede that atoms need not 
be, and most probably are not at all, discrete things. 
For all we know, they may be mere units of rotating 
motions, or whirls, as Thomson and Tait take them 
to be. Perhaps they are not even that, but simply 
imaginary divisions in a uniform continuum which 
renders them remarkably similar to the role which 
the infinitesimal plays in the calculus. 

In the literal sense of the word, atoms are indivis- 
ible units which are commonly supposed to be harder 
than the hardest steel and more elastic than the most 
perfect ivory balls. Such atoms belong to the realm 
of fable ; they are myths. But for all that, there is a 
reference to facts at the bottom of the terms and the 
mechanical part of it is perhaps the least mythical; 



PROFESSOR ERNST MACH. 1 37 

while their hypostatisation, as if they were concrete 
things and not mere features of certain processes, be- 
trays the philosopher's atom (in contrast to that of 
the chemist's) to be a child of metaphysics. It is 
born of the same faulty method of reifying names as 
all other things-in-themselves, and closely considered 
the atom in a system of an atomistic philosophy is 
nothing but our famous thing-in-itself reduced to a 
point. 

Professor Mach is quite justified in denouncing 
the philosopher's atomism, but for all that we must 
not forget that there is truth in the conception of the 
atomistic theory for the use of chemistry. 

If Professor Mach does not follow us, it is partly 
the scientist's punctilious anxiety not to leave the terra 
firma of facts, partly perhaps because he does not em- 
phasise, as we do, the radical difference between the 
formal and the purely sensory elements in experience. 
He makes the statement that science results in an 
economy of thought as a matter of fact and does not 
attempt to explain how economy of thought is pos- 
sible. We find that the universality of the formal law 
is the reason why a recognition of it naturally results 
in an economy of thought. From our standpoint the 
law of the conservation of energy is an empirical for- 
mulation of the philosophical statement "all causa- 
tion is transformation." 

We may add that whether or not Professor Mach 
would be willing to follow us, our view does not stand 



I38 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

in contradiction to his but can be conceived as a wider 
application of it and a further corroboration of its main 
principles. 1 

The ultimate aim of comprehension is to reduce 
all difference to a variety of form and thus to describe 
reality in terms of formal sciences. Hence the im- 
portance of measuring and numbering; of graphic 
formulas or any other conceptions of tridimensional 
relations. All phenomena in the world would be ex- 
plained if their differences could be understood as due 
to a difference of form, while the innermost nature of 
reality is conceived as the same throughout. 

We might say with Kant that the constitution of 
the subject is such as to necessitate every thinking 
being to view the objective world through the spec- 
tacles of form (viz., as being in time and space and 
having its phenomena interconnected by causation), 
but having come to the conclusion that the thinking 
subject discovers in its mind form (viz., relativity) 
and is able to construct a priori the laws of relation 
only because it partakes of form in its objective as- 
pect, as a bodily being which is moving about in 
space ; we prefer to look upon form as an essential 
feature of all objective existence. Thus whenever 
any being exists as an actual concrete presence, it 
manifests itself as body, and bodily form implies jux- 
taposition of parts and succession of events, which 



lFor details of Professor Mach's position see the essay quoted above in 
his Popular Scientific Lectures. 



TRUTH IN MYTHOLOGY. I 39 

means that there is space, time, and change by trans- 
formation. 

Whatever view we may take of the world, the fact 
remains that form is the condition of law in objective 
nature and of comprehension in the subjective mind. 
Without form, there would be no uniformity of any 
kind, no law, no regularity, no order, no rule, no prin- 
ciple of action, no type, no thought, no idea, nor any 
moral ought, nor ideals, nor spiritual life. All life, 
and especially all higher life, and also the aspiration 
to rise higher is dependent upon form, and the formal 
is peculiar in this, that it possesses universality in its 
particular manifestations. The laws of form are uni- 
versal, omnipresent, immutable ; the several bodily 
forms are mere instances, transitory, particular, and 
subject to change. This contrast is at the bottom of 
science, of ethics, of art, of life itself, and also of re- 
ligion. 

TRUTH IN MYTHOLOGY. 

Science should be a description of facts made in 
such a way as to reveal their interconnection. But 
since many facts are withdrawn from observation, we 
must fill out the gaps of our knowledge by assump- 
tions and hypotheses. Thus the edifice of science is 
propped up by scaffolds and the missing links in a 
series of facts are filled out with auxiliary construc- 
tions {Hilfsco)ist?-uctionc)i) which do not represent facts 



I4O THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

but serve merely to render the interrelation of facts 
intelligible. 

The ideal constructs of our scientific notions rep- 
resent realities. They do not consist of scaffolds 
alone, and there is no scaffold which has not been 
erected to help in building up representations of ob- 
jective facts. 

Let us call the representation of facts positive sci- 
ence or simply truth, and the scaffolding the mythology 
of science, and we shall see that the road to truth leads 
everywhere through mythology. Certain facts of the 
surrounding world impress themselves upon a sen- 
tient being, and these impressions come to represent 
facts. These facts are not seen at once in their cau- 
sal connection; they appear unconnected among them- 
selves, and in the attempt to formulate them, to rep- 
resent them, to construct them in mental images, we 
fill out the gaps of our knowledge with such inven- 
tions as are supplied by analogy. 

Mythology, in religion as well as in science, is the 
indispensable ladder to truth. We cannot build with- 
out scaffolds. So we cannot construct truth without 
mythology. We have to introduce allegorical expres- 
sions in order to fill out gaps with analogies. 

Mythology becomes fatal to the building up of 
truth as soon as we consider it as truth itself. The 
scaffold is erected simply as an assistance for building, 
and if the building is finished the scaffold should be 
torn down. The progress of science which is so much 



TRUTH IN MYTHOLOGY. I4I 

helped by mythology has periods of purification in 
which the mythology is discarded. This is sometimes 
a difficult task, because the very terms of science are 
mostly both at the same time truth and mythology, 
building-stones and scaffold. 

Take, for instance, the term atom. The chemist 
observes that the elements always combine in certain 
proportions and formulates the law of the equivalence 
of their atomic weights. In order to think this pro- 
cess, to reconstruct it in mental images, he imagines 
that matter consists of infinitely small particles of 
constant weight. This is a fiction useful for its pur- 
pose, but it may be just as erroneous as the method 
employed in the infinitesimal calculus of thinking of 
a continuous curve as consisting of a broken line of 
infinitely small parts, or of thinking of a certain force 
as being composed of a parallelogram of forces. The 
parallelogram of forces is a scaffold helpful for repre- 
senting in mental symbols the coexistence of different 
abstractions of the same kind (e. g., motions of a dif- 
ferent velocity and direction). But this scaffold is 
not a mere scaffold, it is not erected without any pur- 
pose; its final aim is the description of facts. 

The proposition to consider light as rays travel- 
ling in straight lines is a scaffold, it is mythology ; 
but this analogy contains a truth, it contains a real 
building- stone which should not be torn down with 
the scaffold. This truth is one-sided ; it represents 
one feature of light and disregards other features. It 



I42 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

disregards entirely the transversal oscillations of the 
ether, yet it describes another feature, — viz., the 
transmission and refraction of light for the comprehen- 
sion of which we need not take into consideration the 
undulation theory. The physicist calculates with his 
formula sin a/sin /? = ;/ the angle of refraction. There 
is certainly neither a sine a nor a sine ft in reality, but 
there are certain relations of reality which are de- 
scribed in these expressions, and the action of the 
light has a definite quality which can be determined 
with the assistance of the formula sin a/sin j3 = n. 

If the scientist succeeds in determining such real 
qualities of things, even though it be done with the 
assistance of mythology, he discovers a truth. He 
has with the help of his scaffolds succeeded in placing 
a building-stone where it belongs. 

Some scaffolds have to be torn down because they 
hinder further building ; other scaffolds must remain 
because they assist us in modelling, and planning, 
and predetermining certain processes of nature. They 
are like staircases which enable us to reach with ease 
otherwise inaccessible places in towers or domes. 



The idea that science is full of mythology appears 
strange to the non-scientific, and it is often overlooked 
by scientists themselves. But the idea that religious 
mythology, in spite of its many irrational superstitions 
and wrong analogies, beams with truth is also little 



TRUTH IN MYTHOLOGY. 1 43 

heeded by the many. In fact, man's method of reach- 
ing truth is the same in religion as in science. 

The religious ideas such as God and soul are men- 
tal constructs which copy certain realities ; but these 
very terms, as they are used, are mythological ex- 
pressions ; they are still surrounded by their scaffolds. 
Many people know by their own experience the use- 
fulness and indispensability of the scaffold. Without 
the scaffold they would never have had an inkling of 
the truth, for whose representation it was built, and 
it is natural that they consider the scaffold as the 
building itself. This is the reason why the narrow- 
minded orthodox denounce any one who would lay 
hand on or tear down any part of the scaffold, which 
has become a hindrance to the further development of 
religious ideals. 

Positivism, i. e., the representation of facts with- 
out any admixture of theory or mythology, is an ideal 
which in its purity perhaps will never be realised. 
Nevertheless, it is no ignis fatuus, no will-o'-the-wisp 
that leads us astray. Our science is constantly more 
and more approaching this ideal, and the progress of 
humanity is intimately connected with it. 

In ethics also we should distinguish between posi- 
tive facts and mythology. Ethics based upon mere 
theories, upon our interpretation of nature which we 
add to facts, is mythological ; positive ethics is sim- 
ply that deportment which is suggested by a compre- 
hension of the facts themselves. 



144 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

Mythological ethics may be quite correct, just as 
much so as the application of a mythological theory 
of science may be within certain limits reliable as a 
working hypothesis. But it is desirable to understand 
the nature of mythological ethics in order to distin- 
guish between truth and fiction. 



THE SOUL AS A THING-IN-ITSELF. 

THE most important application of the theory of 
things-in-themselves applies to man's own self. 
If there are no things-in-themselves, it appears that 
we are driven to the conclusion that man is a mere 
conglomeration of forces with their correspondent 
feelings and nothing more. For in the nomenclature 
of the old psychology the soul is the thing-in-itself of 
man, and a denial of things-in-themselves it seems 
will lead to a denial of the existence of the soul. 

WHAT IS SOUL? 1 

Mind, soul, and spirit, are synonyms ; they are 
abstractions from the same reality with slight varia- 
tions of meaning. We speak of soul when we think 
of the sentiments of a man ; we speak of mind when 
we refer mainly to his rational powers and the inter- 
action that takes place among his ideas ; we speak of 
spirit when emphasising the significance and char- 
acter of thoughts without reference to bodily condi- 
tions. We speak of the spirit of a book to denote its 

IThis essay appeared first in The Monist, Vol. VIII., pp. 83-99, in reply to 
Mr. Edward Douglas Fawcett's criticism of the author's Panlogism which is 
the doctrine that logic (or rather the norms of rationality) are universal. 



146 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

tendency and import, but we should not say that the 
book is ensouled, for it has no feelings. Should the 
expression be used, "there is soul in the book, " we 
could only mean that it had been written by a man of 
sentiment, that the soul of the book is the enthusiasm 
which it is liable to rouse. While a book may bear 
the stamp of intellectuality, we cannot speak of the 
mind of a book, because the book is not active. It 
may contain thoughts ; but it does not think ; it may 
present arguments, but it does not argue; it may be 
rational, but it does not reason. It cannot reply to 
objections which a reader may happen to make. 

Assuming that the chemical elements are various 
forms of the same substance (which, according to the 
law expressed in Mendeljeff's series, is more than 
simply probable), and observing that the materials of 
which human bodies consist are not different from 
materials found in the air, the water, and the earth, 
and also in the stars, we come to the conclusion that 
the conditions of sentiency from which the soul takes 
its origin are a feature that is an inherent quality of 
all existence. The sentiency of a man is not inserted 
into his body, but is the inner aspect of his bodily 
organisation. It is the subjectivity of his objective 
existence, and is as such called. "Soul." 

By "soul" we understand the system and sum- 
total of all the different kinds of feeling that animate 
a sentient organism ; and every feeling is conceived 
as the exact analogue of some nervous activity. Soul 



WHAT IS SOUL? I47 

is a commonwealth of sentiments and thoughts, of 
wants, and longings and plans to satisfy these desires. 
And this community of ideas includes notions of what 
might be, viz., hopes, ideals, imaginings, aspirations 
for things nobler, greater, better. 

The peculiarity of feelings, such as we know them 
from our own experience, and their practical impor- 
tance, consist in this, that they represent, symbolise, 
or denote the various things, relations, and actions 
with which they are severally associated. The forms 
of the various feelings depend upon the forms of the 
conditions under which they were experienced, and 
thus they appear as images of the surrounding world. 
They are subjective states of awareness and at the 
same time pictures of objective reality, and their mem- 
ories, being aglow with life, make up the fabric of 
personality. 

Sensations and memories remain in constant com- 
munication among themselves. By a combination of 
two or more images new ideas can be produced; the 
process of procreating new images being called im- 
agination. The interaction that takes place among the 
various images or representations is called thought. 
When thought remains consistent with itself and in 
agreement with the possibilities of actual existence, 
it is called rational, when it begins to contradict it- 
self, irrational. 1 Thus reason is in the province of 

iThe problems of the a priori and Pure Reason are discussed in Funda- 
mcntal Problems, pp. 26-60 (Chapter " Form and Formal Thought") and in the 
Primer of Philosophy, pp. 51-117. Further in the author's translation of Kant's 



I48 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

thought that same intrinsic necessity and harmony 
which in objective existence is the condition of the 
cosmic order as it appears in the regularities which 
can be formulated in so-called laws of nature. 

That which pertains to soul (i. e., sentiency) is 
called psychical; that which has meaning is called 
spiritual ; that which characterises the rules of the 
interaction that takes place among soul-forms is called 
mental. 

MENTALITY AND THE UNIVERSAL LAWS OF FORM. 

Wherever feelings (that is to say, states of aware- 
ness) acquire meaning which is different according to 
the various forms of feeling corresponding to various 
forms of objective realities, there soul originates. 1 
Soul, or spirit, or mind, is neither an unknowable 
essence nor a mystical monad-entity, but a definite 
condition of being which depends upon definite forms 
.of organisation, the characteristic feature of which is 
representativeness. A definite form of feeling is rep- 
resentative if it depicts, if it stands for, and denotes a 
certain reality to which it has become related and 
associated by repeated experience. The paramount 
importance of representativeness is obvious, for it is 
the representative value of feelings which renders 
adaptation to the surrounding world possible. In 

Prolegomena. See also The Monist, Vol. II., No. 1, pp. 111-120 ("The Origin 
of Thought-forms"). 

lFor further details as to the origin of soul and mind compare the first 
chapters of the author's Soul of Man. 



MENTALITY AND THE LAWS OF FORM. 1 49 

other words, while things devoid of mentality are at 
the mercy of circumstances, mind acquires the ability 
of directing and marshalling the forces of nature and 
of making them subservient to certain purposes. 

There are various degrees of mentality, the highest 
of which is the rational comprehension of man. This 
leads us to the next question. 

Reason is, in its last and most practical aspect, 
the agreement of mental actions with the universal 
conditions of reality. 

The most important feature of reality is its form. 
Existence in the abstract is a mere generalisation, 
and as such it is that feature which all existences have 
in common ; accordingly, it is the same throughout. 
But the forms of things are that feature of reality 
which determines the suchness of actual existence in 
every case. Yet, while forms vary, the laws of form 
are invariable and universal. The idea of a thing-in- 
itself is pure fiction, but the conception of form-in- 
itself (of pure form or absolute form) is not only cor- 
rect, but it is also a truth of great importance. 

The most abstract forms of thought are logical and 
arithmetical relations, which can be developed by 
purely mental experiment. The simplest instance is 
afforded in pure numbers, as follows . 

We posit a unit (by taking a step or marking it as 
a dot, or a dash, or a stroke, or whatever you like) 
and call it "one"; we posit another unit (taking a 
second step or making a second mark) and call it 



I50 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

"two"; another, we call it " three "; again another, 
we call it "four." So long as we keep the same name 
for exactly the same operation, referring it to the 
same starting-point, we shall, with the same opera- 
tions, always arrive at the same results. The state- 
ment "2 + 2=4" holds good for all operations in 
which twice two units are added, whether it be a 
planet that makes twice two revolutions, or whether a 
boy plucks twice two apples off an apple-tree ; under 
all circumstances the result will be the same; it will 
always be four. 

Statements that hold good everywhere are called 
universal, and universality is the characteristic feature 
of reason. All the laws of reason are intrinsically 
necessary. If we speak of necessity in connection 
with reason, we do not mean compulsion or coercion. 
The immanent necessity of mathematics and logic 
means nothing more nor less than that its application 
is without exception ; necessity in this sense is a syn- 
onym of universality. Universality is the most char- 
acteristic feature of reason. He who denies the uni- 
versal application of logical thought-operations denies 
the existence of reason. If the Logos were not uni- 
versal, it is not truly the Logos. A denial of Pan- 
logism is a denial of the applicability of reason. 

Reason applies not to any particular thing alone; 
it refers not to here or there only, nor does it describe 
the yesterday nor the to-morrow alone ; it applies 
everywhere and at all times. Its nature is ubiquity 



MENTALITY AND THE LAWS OF FORM. 151 

and eternity. Reason consists of rules that formulate 
those features of the world which could under no cir- 
cumstances be different' — those which were the same 
from the beginning, those which would be the same 
for any imaginable world; it reflects the eternality of 
being ; it is even excempt from evolution, for it de- 
scribes that which does not and need not evolve in 
the cosmic development ; it reduces to exact terms 
what may fittingly be called the supernatural, for it 
mirrors that which applies not only to nature as it 
actually is, but to any other, to any imaginable kind 
of nature; it states those laws which would remain 
the same even though the whole world of actual exist- 
ence were broken to pieces. 

Kant is surprised to find reality in agreement with 
pure reason, and seems to take reason (i. e., man's 
rationality) as the prior, and it is the prior, but only 
subjectively ; it is not TzpoTtpov </>ixret but irporepov 7rpos 
17/aas. The truth is that reality is first, and comes to 
us through the normal channels of experience ; reality 
is represented in sensation, and when analysed by 
abstract thought, it is found to possess in its formal 
aspect a certain inalienable feature which is the same 
uniformity that conditions the cosmic order of the 
world and renders the formulation of its regularities 
possible. Reason — i. e., human reason — is nothing 
but a reflection of this inalienable feature of reality in 
consciousness, and originates with the apperception 
of the universality of the law of sameness. 



152 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

The world-order is the most important feature of 
existence ; it is that which constitutes the divinity of 
the cosmos; it is the Logos of the Neoplatonist and 
of the Fourth Gospel. It is hyperphysical (using the 
term in its literal significance to denote that which is 
higher than the physical) because it is the condition 
of all possible order. 1 It is prior not in time, but in 
dignity; not an antecedent, but the supreme condi- 
tion of all things. It is that through which all events 
can be classified in laws of nature. Being in its ulti- 
mate analysis the consistency of sameness, it is also 
the condition of rationality in the individual reason of 
human beings. It is that which makes mind and pur- 
pose-regulated action possible, and is the ultimate 
ground on which all moral conduct rests. 

Fichte's definition of God as the moral world order 
is not only intelligible but also sensible, but his prop- 
osition that God is the absolute ego is neither a prac- 
tical idea nor is it tenable on logical grounds ; it has 
no sense. The man who can tell us what "absolute 
ego" means has not as yet been found. 

Fichte arrived at his notion of the absolute ego in 
a peculiar way. He started from an exaggerated ideal- 
ism according to which the sole reality was his own 
ego ; a proposition concerning which his students be- 
gan to make their jokes, saying that Professor Fichte 
and Mrs. Fichte were the only two true realities in the 



1 We might call it supernatural if the word " nature ' ' is used i 
ited sense as material existence. 



MENTALITY AND THE LAWS OF FORM. I 53 

world. And when Fichte surrendered his idealism 
he did not say there was no ego-entity, but that all 
the various egos of human consciousness were phe- 
nomena of the absolute ego, which is God. But the 
individual history of Fichte's philosophical evolution 
does not justify us in retaining a term which testifies 
to the previous errors of its inventor. 

As it was difficult to understand that air exists, so 
it is the more difficult to prove that this immaterial 
presence of the world-Logos is an actual reality, om- 
nipresent and eternal. 

People who are accustomed to imagine that only 
that exists which is material are inclined to regard 
formal relations and with them reason with its uni- 
versalities, or in a word the Logos, as a non-entity ; 
but it is more real than the gravity of stones and the 
resistance of solid bodies. It is not nowhere, but 
everywhere ; not never, but ever. It is the most in- 
alienable quality of being; it is the most real feature 
of reality, and if we do not appreciate its paramount 
importance it is on account of its very omnipresence 
and unalterable permanence. The attempt to con- 
ceive that which in its very nature is superpersonal, 
as an individual being, as a world-spirit or a world- 
monad, or as an absolute ego, is a misconception of 
its most important feature, of that feature which con- 
stitutes its supermateriality, supernaturality, and di- 
vinity. 



154 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 



UNITY AND VARIETY. 



The sameness of principle that is involved in the 
universality of law does not mean sameness of exist- 
ence throughout, nor does it exclude variety. On the 
contrary, it involves it. As there are not two points 
in the universe which, in their actual relations to the 
whole, are exactly equivalent, so space, time, and ma- 
teriality are "the germs whence sprout the many," 
not by haphazard but according to the law that, under 
different conditions, with different surroundings, and 
in different periods, the same combination will be 
different. 

Sentient beings become rational by comprehend- 
ing the universal features of existence such as are ex- 
pressed with precision in the formal sciences, logic, 
arithmetic, and mathematics. While there is no un- 
folding of the cosmic order, the Logos, the prototype 
of reason, there is an evolution of rationality in sen- 
tient beings ; and this evolution follows definite laws 
which, however, are not yet fully understood. 

Hegel regards the theory that every thesis begets 
an antithesis, and that the struggle between thesis 
and antithesis will lead to a synthesis, as the highest 
law of the evolution of thought, the doctrine of which 
he calls dialectics. He uses the theory of his dialectics 
as a Procrustean bed in the history of civilisation and 
philosophy, leading to many artificial conceptions and 



UNITY AND VARIETY. 1 55 

vagaries. But while Hegel's dialectical method has 
its faults, we are not prepared to say that any and all 
dialectics are to be rejected. 

Hegelianism in the narrow conception of its 
founder . is overthrown but its panlogism is not 
doomed. Panlogism is an old theory. It has prac- 
tically been the consciously or unconsciously avowed 
tenet of all religion and philosophy. It is the soul of 
Platonism ; it lurks in the fantastic theosophy of Neo- 
Platonism ; it is beautifully expressed in the Logos 
theory of the Fourth Gospel ; it is not absent in St. 
Augustine and St. Thomas ; among the schoolmen it 
is the philosophical background of realism, and finally 
it is the corner-stone of the spirit of modern science; 
it is the underlying keynote of monism, for arguments 
of any kind presuppose its truth. Without panlogism 
the universe would be a chaos of innumerable partic- 
ulars, be they monads, or atoms, or what not. But 
if panlogism be true, the universe is necessarily and 
intrinsically a unity. 

The unity of the universe is neither local, nor tem- 
poral, nor material ; it is not comparable either to the 
centre of a circle, or to the monarch of an empire. 
The unity of a universe is a unitariness of its consti- 
tution, and not the dominion of a central monad over 
other monads of less importance. It is not a definite 
unit, but a sameness of the laws of existence, a one- 
ness of the cosmic order. God is not one in number, 
but one in kind. He is unique. To believe in one 



156 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

God, as opposed to several Gods, is a pagan view 
which is more advanced than polytheism but remains 
upon the same level. 

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The unity of consciousness is one of the most 
puzzling and interesting problems. The old school 
of psychology knows very well that the mind consists 
of many images and exhibits a very complicated 
thought-mechanism, but they regard all thoughts as 
mere tools in the possession of a soul-monad. The 
fact that there is always one idea uppermost in a 
normal consciousness is explained by the assumption 
that the soul-monad selects one thought or another 
as an object of its attention. But the unity of con- 
sciousness is no more a reason for believing that man's 
soul consists of a monad, than the unity of a watch 
would be for supposing that there is in every watch 
an indivisible watch-monad which causes its hands to 
denote by their position one definite moment of time. 

The fact that one idea is the strongest and monop- 
olises consciousness is no more wonderful than that a 
man can walk in only one direction at a time, and not 
in two, three, or four, or that his eyes can focus one 
object only and not two, or three, or more. If every 
unitary action demanded the presence of a monad, we 
would be in need of electricity monads for electric 
currents, engine-monads for every machine, and na- 
tional monads for every nation that has a distinct in- 



THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 157 

dividuality and history of its own. The unity of con- 
sciousness does not imply that there is a definite and 
impervious centre in the conscious being but is con- 
ditioned by the object of attention, which may be a 
thing outside that is watched, or an idea, a purely 
mental representation that is considered. 

The immortality of the soul depends according to 
the old school upon the preservation of the monad- 
soul of a man, — a very precarious immortality in- 
deed, for this monad is a very hypothetical creature. 
The idea prevails that if the soul cannot exist in bod- 
iless nudity as a ghost, and if body and soul are in- 
separably connected, the soul must die with the body. 

Now it is true that monism insists in a certain 
sense upon the inseparableness of body and soul ; we 
cannot cut the soul out of the body and say, here is 
my soul and there is my body. There are not souls- 
in-themselves. Wherever a soul exists, it is incar- 
nated in a body ; but while the soul is always insepa- 
rably connected with materiality, it is not identical 
with the body, and thus, while the body will be de- 
stroyed, the soul can be preserved. 

We repeat : soul is the form of feelings, and the 
form of feelings depends upon the form of the nerve- 
activity of an organised system ; and every organised 
system consists of definitely arranged groups of ma- 
terial combinations. The soul is preserved wherever 
the form is preserved ; but the preservation of soul- 
forms does not depend upon the retention of those 



158 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

material particles which at a given moment constitute 
the body. The fact is familiar that the material par- 
ticles of living beings are constantly changing. Life, 
physiologically considered, is Stoffwechsel or meta- 
bolism, a constant flux of materials. There is no 
sameness of substance whatever. The identity of a 
living being involving the sentiments of conscious- 
ness is not maintained through the presence of a 
monad, but through the preservation of its form. All 
the many subconscious and conscious memories which 
form the elements of our mentality are definite traces 
of former sense-impressions, reacting upon new sense- 
impressions and embodying sentiments, and thoughts, 
the forms of which are preserved in the cerebral sys- 
tem, the substance of which is constantly changing. 
Am I for that reason another person because I cannot 
think the same thought twice with the same mole- 
cules? Does the thought change because the oxygen 
engaged in the first act of thinking has now entered 
new combinations and is soon to be discarded from 
the system as waste material? We might as well de- 
clare that the significance of a word changes when it 
is written once in pencil and once in ink. Man's per- 
sonal identity consists not in any way in an identity 
of material particles, but in the sameness of form 
which is preserved by the continuity of his existence. 



IMMORTALITY. 1 59 



IMMORTALITY. 

The continuity of life appears to be broken in 
death ; but we must emphasise that it is not broken, 
it only appears to be broken. Every action in which 
a man manifests himself is a preservation of his pe- 
culiar personality; it preserves his individual life- 
forms and immortalises him. The spheres of influence 
vary greatly, but no man can fail within the range of 
his circle to impress his soul upon the future evolu- 
tion of the race. The evolution of life on earth is as 
continuous as the life of every individual being ; and 
every individual being is such as he is only because 
the soul-treasures of former life are hoarded up in 
him ; he is not a beginning from nothing but repre- 
sents the continuation of the soul-forms of which he 
consists at the commencement of his life. He is the 
product of evolution. He adds something of his own, 
be it little or much as the case may be, and impresses 
his soul into the new life that grows up around him. 

These considerations are not fancies, but descrip- 
tions of the facts of life. This immortality is a truth 
and, indeed, an indubitable truth, which no one can 
deny. The same continu^ of soul that takes place 
in every individual life, can be traced in the develop- 
ment of the whole of mankind. 

Mr. Edward Douglas Fawcett, an upholder of the 
monad theory in psychology, rejects the idea of an 



l6o THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

immanent immortality consisting in the preservation 
and transference of soul-forms, but offers no refutation. 
All he can say against it is that he is not pleased with 
it. He says : 

"For myself I would not give two pence for an immortality 
of this kind, and I have no doubt that the average man in the 
street will heartily echo my sentiments." 1 

We may fairly grant that the average man in the 
street does not care for preserving his soul in the fur- 
ther evolution of mankind, but Mr. Fawcett will 
scarcely pride himself on the applause of the vulgar, 
should his philosophy be unfortunate enough to re- 
ceive it. We might as well revive the Inquisition as 
an ultimate authority of orthodoxy, as enthrone the 
man of the street upon the tribunal of truth for decid- 
ing what shall be or shall not be acceptable. What- 
ever the man of the street may think, the fact remains 
that there is a preservation of soul-forms, and evolu- 
tion would be a very mysterious process if this kind 
of soul-immortality through the continuous preserva- 
tion of soul-forms were not true. 

Quoting from me the sentence that "Christ is ac- 
tually a living presence in humanity," Mr. Fawcett 
says : 

'* No, no, not so fast. The Nazarene's body has long mould- 
ered into dust, assuming that he ever lived. His soul therefore 
on the lines of monistic positivism, has been extinguished. What 

1 " From Berkeley to Hegel ' ' by Edward Douglas Fawcett, in The Monist, 
Vol. VII., No. i., pp. 41-81. 



IMMORTALITY. l6l 

is ' present in humanity ' is not Christ, but ideas about Christ 
which is a very different matter." 

Now we concede that ideas about Christ are not 
Christ himself; but the ideas of Christ are Christ. 
The soul of Jesus did not depend upon that heap of 
atoms which constituted his body; the soul of a man 
consists in the thought-forms and word-forms which 
dominate his entire being and determine his conduct. 
The soul of Jesus consists in his teachings, and his 
teachings are preserved in words which have now 
been translated into all languages of the world. The 
words of Jesus are his soul, and his soul is immortal, 
and this is good Christian teaching too ; it is not a 
Church-dogma, but it is the doctrine of Jesus himself, 
viz., the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel. 

We read in John vi. 63, and to indicate the im- 
portance of the quotation I quote it in large print : 

" It is the spirit that quickeneth ; trie flesh 
" profiteth nothing. The words that I speak 
u unto you, they are spirit and they are life." 

This is no figure of speech, but literal truth. Spirit 
is not a substance ; spirit is the significance of words ; 
and what is more significant than words that are true? 
Words are spirit, and it is the spirit that quickeneth. 
Christ lives where the word of Christ is received and 
where it becomes the motive of conduct. The ma- 
teriality of man's life, the human body, is in its way 
important enough, but it is important only as the 



l62 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

vessel of spirit. The body is not the man ; the atoms 
are not his soul ; the corporeal is not the highest and 
the immortal part of our being ; and, in spite of the 
temporary inseparableness of soul and body, there is 
no truth in the identification of soul and body. 

The soul of a man is in one sense inseparable from 
his body ; yet in another constitutes a distinct and 
disparate reality which can be preserved while the 
body is dissolved, so matter and energy are insepa- 
rable yet distinct. There can be no energy without 
matter and no matter without energy. Yet energy can 
be transferred from the burning coal to the water in 
the boiler, and from the water in the boiler through 
the steam to the wheels of the engine. Thus a trans- 
ference of soul is accomplished by a transference of 
thought-forms. The essential thing that gives char- 
acter to a definite soul is psychologically considered 
the meaning of its ideas and these physiologically 
considered are the structure or form of its organic 
constitution. The core of our character is the pur- 
poses which we pursue in life and these purposes are 
objectively manifested by and can be described as 
forms or relational conditions. 

THE IMMORTALITY OF BOOKS. 

Take an illustration : Here is the Bible. It con- 
sists, as all books, of many sheets of paper covered 
with little characters in black. Is the Bible destroyed 
if this copy of the Bible is burned? No, not at all. 



THE SIMILE OF THE SEAL. 163 

That which constitutes the Bible is not the material ; 
it consists of those subtle forms which convey the 
spirit of the Bible. The spirit of the Bible, as it is 
embodied in the forms of printed words, is impressed 
upon the paper in printer's ink, but this spirit of the 
Bible does not consist of paper and printer's ink. 
The spirit of the Bible is the meaning expressed in 
words and the purpose which the writers had in view. 
Meanings, purposes, ideas, expressed in words are 
called thoughts. Thoughts cannot be burned, and 
soul cannot be crushed by destroying one copy of the 
forms in which it resides. The inquisitors proposed 
to extirpate heresy and burned many thousands of 
heretics, yet they could not quench the spirit, and the 
heretics have now become the leading nations of the 
earth. 

THE SIMILE OF THE SEAL. 

Another instance of the preservation of form is 
the imprint of a seal. And indeed the simile is good 
because it shows, in a better way than the printing of 
a book, the immateriality of form. The paper re- 
ceives the form of the letters which constitute the 
book in printer's ink. There is a transfer of matter 
and thus the allegory is apt to be misunderstood; 
but the imprint of a seal is no material transfer what- 
ever. In making a seal-imprint we distribute a cer- 
tain amount of sealing-wax on paper and stamp the 
seal on it. The amount of sealing-wax is the same 



164 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

before and after ; but before the stamping there is no 
seal ; the seal originates through the impression. 

The seal may break or be destroyed, but it can be 
reproduced, and, whenever the selfsame form is again 
imprinted on wax, there the seal will reappear. True, 
there is no seal without sealing-wax or whatever other 
material be used, but the seal is not the material; the 
seal is the form which is impressed upon the material. 

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. 

Taking the facts of experience as the ultimate test 
of truth, and accepting scientifically elucidated state- 
ments of fact as the guide of conduct, we arrive at 
the conclusion that spirit is paramount in importance, 
and body is of no account whatever save in the ser- 
vice of the spirit. The value of anything material 
and also the value of our bodily make-up must be 
measured by its usefulness in the support and growth 
of the soul. In itself the flesh profiteth nothing. 

Inorganic nature is indifferent ; the storm, the sun- 
light, the ocean, are neither moral nor immoral ; they 
are neither good nor bad ; they become good or bad 
simply through mind. If in the starry heavens two 
celestial bodies should meet in collision, their con- 
flagration would be of significance only if somewhere 
living souls were affected ; otherwise it would be per- 
fectly indifferent. 

He who cannot comprehend the essentiality of 
form will never free himself from materialism in phi- 



THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. 165 

losophy, psychology, and ethics. He will not appre- 
ciate that the most important realities are immaterial. 
He will try to think God and soul as substances or 
entities, and seek the purpose of life in pleasure. 

The significance of the formal is obvious, but even 
a Plato regarded ideas and mental images as consist- 
ing of some subtle material. The notion that vision, 
the sensations of sight, and with them mental images 
or ideas, are substantial things, lost its last hold when 
Newton's corpuscular theory of light broke down. 
We now understand that the picture in the eye is due 
to a transference of form and not of any material, 
neither breath, nor ether, nor any other substance, be 
it ever so subtile. 

Forms themselves, the relational features of bod- 
ies, their shape, their structure, and relations of things 
to other things, are a reality, even though they do 
not consist of matter, and the laws of pure form, 
although purely ideal constructions, are fraught with 
the highest significance because they are formulas 
which describe the universal norms of existence. In- 
deed, form and everything formal may be called the 
supreme reality ; for the formal laws are the factors 
that shape the world. The refinement of forms in 
living beings, in souls, consisting in the recognition 
of truth and the actualisation of ideals, based upon 
the objective standard of truth and tested in the fur- 
nace of experience, is the summum bonum and ultimate 
aim of life. 



l66 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

The standard of the highest good and the norm of 
moral ideals is not in happiness, but truth. The test 
of progress is not an increase of pleasure, but the 
growth of soul. It characterises the materialist to 
overrate the sensual and so he naturally measures the 
worth of life in weighing off the amounts of pleasures 
and pains. But the spiritual life and its appurte- 
nances are a factor that ranges above the considera- 
tion of happiness. Happiness is an accompaniment 
of life, but not its aim. 

Evolution consists in the expanse of the soul and 
in a growth of mind, but obviously there is little or no 
perceptible increase of happiness. The ratio between 
our wants and their satisfaction remains about the 
same, and, while it is true that many pains are alle- 
viated, there is at the same time an increase of sensi- 
bility to pain. Thus there is rather a decrease of 
happiness in evolution, for children enjoy life better 
than adult people, and, in comparison with the lower 
races, who in their ignorance and simplicity are as 
happy as children, the most civilised people appear 
morose and gloomy. A wise man is not happier than 
a fool ; on the contrary, the fool is mostly merrier 
than a wise man, who foregoes many joys because of 
his deeper wisdom. Of course there are intellectual 
moral pleasures, which, if not greater, are nobler, 
than the greatest merriment of fools. But it is not 
(as Mr. Fawcett thinks) the pleasure which gives 
value to moral aspirations. In criticising the ethical 



THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. 1 67 

view which I proposed under the name of meliorism, 
he says : 

"Meliorism does not find the value of life in reaping pleas- 
ures. Nevertheless, a value that does not relieve pain or produce 
or tend to produce, pleasure, is a thing which I, for one, confess 
myself at a loss to understand. The term, in fact, seems mean- 
ingless. I fail entirely to see why we should vex ourselves here 
with ceaseless strivings and strugglings, when the cosy nooks of 
degeneration lie open to us." 

Certainly we need not strive and struggle. We 
have our choice. We can prefer the cosy nooks of 
degeneration, and if we prefer them we shall have 
them. There are countries which are governed upon 
the principle that progress is an evil, and there life is, 
in many respects, much pleasanter and quieter. Life 
in England, and especially in North America, makes 
great demands upon the people, and urges them to 
exert themselves to the utmost of their abilities. He 
who measures the values of life by the amount of pain 
relieved and the greatness of pleasures realised will 
pity them and regard their lives as failures. How 
different (and I, for one, say how much truer) is the 
standard of value given by the psalmist when he says: 

"The days of our years are threescore 
" years and ten ; and if, by reason of strength, 
" they be fourscore years, yet is their strength 
u labor and sorrow." (xc. 10.) 

I have surrendered the Apostolic creed in its lit- 
eral acceptance, but I have never ceased to appreciate 



l68 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

this sentence of the psalmist on account of its deep 
truth. In my mental evolution I have been alienated 
from the Christianity of my childhood ; I have aban- 
doned the dogmatism of Church-doctrines; and I have 
surrendered the paganism of believing in the letter 
that killeth. I have dared to seek the direct revela- 
tion of God in the facts of life and, in taking the con- 
sequences of my radicalism, I became more and more 
convinced that God spoke to the prophets and to 
Christ in no different language from what he speaks 
to us : to you, to me, or to any one who is willing to 
listen. However much the spirit of Bible teachings 
is misunderstood ; nay, whatever errors the authors 
of the Bible may have been subject to, this much 
seems sure that they hit upon several very important 
moral truths which are by no means antiquated. From 
the standpoint of positive monism, I find them veri- 
fied, and considering the errors of hedonistic ethics 
which cannot but lead people astray on the most im- 
portant questions of life, I find that there is more 
truth in the two Bible passages quoted in this article 
than can be found in all the average irreligious litera- 
ture of to-day. The doctrines of the old religions are 
in many respects misleading, but in so far as they 
teach right ethics, I do not hesitate to say that they 
reveal the truth. He who imagines that the purpose 
of life is enjoyment will, when he tries to realise the 
hedonistic principle, be unfailingly and sorely disap- 
pointed. 



PANPSYCHISM AND PANBIOTISM. 1 69 

The evolution of mind is not important for itself 
alone ; it is important also and mainly in its exterior 
life as an objective manifestation. Mind is an appear- 
ance of truth ; it is an incarnation of God. The pur- 
pose of mind, accordingly, is its own self-realisation ; 
it is a higher and higher development of truth. The 
purpose of life is mental growth and mental evolution. 
Mind hungers for truth ; and truth is not only intel- 
lectual comprehension but also religious devotion; it 
is not mere theory but a motive for action. Thoughts 
are not pure conceits, but motor impulses of a definite 
character, and, therefore, it is not simply a notion but 
a power. The more man acquires of truth, the more 
is he ensouled by God. 

Priests have built temples and cathedrals, they 
have carved idols and images of God, they have wor- 
shipped all kinds of symbols and regarded them as 
holy — but there is nothing holy except truth, and the 
highest aim a man can have is leading a life of truth. 

PANPSYCHISM OR PANBIOTISM. 
Professor Haeckel, in his article "Our Monism," 1 
propounds the theory of Panpsychism, which he con- 
siders an essential feature of monism. He says: 

" One highly important principle of my monism seems to me 
to be that I regard all matter as ensouled, that is to say, as en- 
dowed with feeling (pleasure and pain) and with motion, or, bet- 
ter, with the power of motion. As elementary (atomistic) attrac- 
tion and repulsion these powers are asserted in every simplest 
1 The Monist,, Vol. II., No. 4. 



170 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

chemical process, and on them is based also every other phenom- 
enon, consequently also the highest developed soul-activity of 
man. 

"Simplest example: sulphur and quicksilver rubbed to- 
tegether form cinnabar, a new body of entirely different proper- 
ties. This is possible only on the supposition that the molecules 
(or atoms) of the two elements if brought within the proper dis- 
tance, mutually feel each other, by attraction move toward each 
other ; on the decomposition of a simple chemical compound the 
contrary takes place : repulsion (Empedocles's doctrine of ' the 
love and hatred of atoms ')" 

Not being able to accept Professor Haeckel's doc- 
trine of Panpsychism, I propose what might best be 
called Panbiotism, briefly set forth in the maxim 71-av 
fiiwrov; that is, everything is fraught with life; it con- 
tains life ; it has the ability to live. 

The word /3«otos is mostly used by Greek authors 
in the negative, as in the phrase /3iW ov /3iwtoV, an un- 
livable life, in the sense of a life unendurable or not 
worth living. Thus Sophocles and others. The word 
fiiwros is embodied in the term Panbiotism in its ety- 
mological sense of "livable." 

I am willing to concede to Professor Haeckel that 
all nature is alive. Indeed, I have most emphatically 
insisted on the doctrine that there is a spontaneity 
pervading all nature. (See Fundamental Problems, 
third edition, pp. no et seqq.) 

By spontaneity is to be understood that kind of 
activity which springs from the nature of the being or 
thing which is active. A motion that is caused by 



PANPSYCHISM AND PANBIOTISM. 171 

pressure or push is not spontaneous; but a motion, 
the motive power of which resides in the moving ob- 
ject, is spontaneous. Thus a cart rolling down a hill 
by its own weight performs a spontaneous motion, 
but when drawn by horses moves, or rather is moved, 
by pull without any spontaneity. 1 Now, everything 
that exists is possessed of certain qualities ; its exist- 
ence is of some definite, peculiar kind, and this its 
peculiar kind is the character of the thing. In the 
character of a thing lies the source of its spontaneous 
actions. The spontaneous actions of the chemical 
elements depend upon their qualities, which always 
react under certain circumstances in a definite way, 
and under the same conditions in the same way. The 
action of sulphur and quicksilver lies in the nature of 
these elements. Their union is not passive, but ac- 
tive. They are not combined, but they do combine. 
He who observes and studies nature cannot be blind 
to the fact that an inalienable, intrinsic power is resi- 
dent in everything that exists. This is true not only 
of organised life, but also of the chemical elements 
as well as of gravitating masses. The motion of a 
falling stone can, no more than the actions of oxydis- 
ing substances, be considered as ultimately due to an 
extraneous pressure that makes them move by push, 



1 Spontaneous motion (as here denned) does not mean action without a 
cause ; nor does the spontaneity of the cart exclude the co-operation of other 
spontaneities, e. g., the mass of the earth co-operates with the gravity of 
falling bodies ; and we must consider all the factors bringing about the final 
result. 



172 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

or to a vis a tergo acting upon inert matter. These 
motions must be spontaneous ; they are due to powers 
inherent in the nature of reality. They are self- 
motions, and in this sense we say that all nature is 
alive. 

The term "life" is here used in a broader sense 
than ordinarily. It means spontaneity or self-motion, 
while in its common signification the term "life 'Ms 
restricted only to the spontaneous action of organised 
beings, i. e., of plants and animals. In order to dis- 
tinguish life in the broader sense from the narrower 
or common acceptance of the term, we call the latter 
"organised life." 

It is not impossible, and I consider it even as 
most probable, that the difference between Professor 
Haeckel and myself rests on a different usage of the 
term "soul." But a vague or inconsistent usage of 
the term, unless we are especially careful in so defin- 
ing it as to prevent misunderstandings, will inevitably 
beget errors. Thus the doctrine of Panpsychism is 
liable to lead to fantastic ideas, and to cause great 
confusion concerning the activity of what is generally 
called inanimate nature. 

Soul (as I understand the term) is a system of 
sentient symbols } and the problem of the origin of 
the soul is solved as soon as we understand how feel- 
ings can acquire meaning. 



1 Compare the author's Religion of Science, pp. 35 ff. The Soul 0/ Man, pp. 
84, and Whence and Whither, pp. 54-102. 



PANPSYCHISM AND PANBIOTISM. I 73 

Suppose we have some sentient substance exposed 
to the impressions of the surrounding world. The 
sense-impressions of the surrounding world leave 
traces in the sentient substance ; these traces, which 
are structures of a certain form corresponding exactly 
to the various impressions, are preserved and consti- 
tute a predisposition to being very easily revived by 
impressions of the same kind. The revival of feeling 
in traces left in the sentient structure from former im- 
pressions is called memory. If a new impression of 
the same kind as the traces of the former impressions 
affects a sentient being, the new impression already 
finds a convenient path prepared for its reception. 
Its peculiar vibration fits in the old trace and thus 
runs along very easily in the memory-grooves of for- 
mer impressions, reviving at the same time the feel- 
ings perceived at their original formation. The feel- 
ing thus caused is composed of several elements, 
which naturally are fused into one : first, there is that 
kind of feeling which is produced by the present im- 
pression; secondly, there is the revival of former feel- 
ings or memory-sensations ; and thirdly, there is a 
feeling of congruence resulting from the combination 
of these two. This third element is a new and a very 
important feature. We suppose that it is extremely 
insignificant in the first stages of the development of 
the soul, but, being a constantly growing factor, it 
rapidly increases in importance. The stronger and the 
more independent the memory-structures become, the 



174 THE surd of metaphysics. 

more clearly will their congruence with fresh sense- 
impressions be felt as a congruence. 

This feeling of congruence is the simplest form of 
what psychologists generally call "recognition." 

The recognition of a sense-impression, as being 
the same as some former sense-impression, adds to 
the feeling a new quality ; it imparts meaning to it. 
This feeling of a special kind will now stand for some- 
thing. In this way impressions upon sentient sub- 
stance will, in the course of their natural develop- 
ment, simply by the repetition of similar and same 
impressions, come to indicate the presence of certain 
conditions that cause the impression. This act of in- 
dicating something, of symbolising the presence of a 
reality, of possessing meaning, is the birth of soul. 
Sense-impressions that have acquired meaning are 
called sensations. A sensation standing for a special 
object symbolises that object. Abstract ideas are 
symbols of a higher degree, but they remain symbols 
just the same. And it is the sentient symbols which 
constitute the soul. 

Those actions which are regulated by the mean- 
ings of sentient symbols of which a soul consists 
should alone, according to a strict terminology, be 
called "psychical." The falling stone, the chemical 
elements, when combining or separating, etc., are 
alive; there is a spontanously acting power even in 
unorganised nature. Their movements are mechani- 
cally regulated according to the laws of form ; but 



THOMAS A. EDISON S PANPSYCHISM. 175 

the actions of unorganised nature are not determined 
by the meaning of feelings, and, in truth, we have no 
reason to believe that their feelings- — granting that 
they really do possess feelings of some kind — are 
freighted with even so much as the slightest inkling 
of significance. In a word, there is no soul in the 
stone ; there is no mind in the water-fall ; and there 
is no intelligence in either oxygen or hydrogen. But 
there is soul wherever meaning can be found as the 
regulating motive of actions; there is purpose. And 
wherever purpose is, there is mind. 

THOMAS A. EDISON'S PANPSYCHISM. 

Some time ago Mr. Thomas A. Edison was inter- 
viewed on the question, "What is life?" Mr. Edison 
answered the question ; and his view is quite in ac- 
cord with Professor Haeckel's idea of panpsychism. 
The article appeared first in a daily newspaper. Be- 
ing remarkable for its coincidence with the views of a 
great scientist, and coming from the pen of so inter- 
esting a man as the famous inventor of the phono- 
graph, we deem it best to republish it in full, with the 
permission of Mr. Edison, who, at the same time, ac- 
knowledged the copy sent him to be correct. 

This is the article : 

INTELLIGENT ATOMS. 
•' My mind is not of a speculative order ; it is essentially prac- 
tical, and when I am making an experiment I think only of getting 
something useful, of making electricity perform work. 



I76 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

" I don't soar ; I keep down pretty close to earth. Of course 
there are problems in life I can't help thinking about, but I don't 
try to study them out. It is necessary that they should be studied, 
and men fitted for that work are doing it. I am not fitted for it. 
I leave the theoretical study of electricity to the physicists, confin- 
ing my work to the practical application of the force. It is my 
belief, however, that every atom of matter is intelligent, deriving 
energy from the primordial germ. The intelligence of man is, I 
take it, the sum of the intelligences of the atoms of which he is 
composed. Every atom has an intelligent power of selection and 
is always striving to get into harmonious relation with other atoms. 
The human body is, I think ; maintained in its integrity by the in- 
telligent persistence of its atoms, or rather by an agreement be- 
tween the atoms so to persist. When the harmonious adjustment 
is destroyed the man dies, and the atoms seek other relations. 

"I cannot regard the odor of decay but as the result of the 
efforts of the atoms to dissociate themselves ; they want to get 
away and make new combinations. Man, therefore, may be re- 
garded in some sort as a microcosm of atoms agreeing to constitute 
his life as long as order and discipline can be maintained. But, 
of course, there is dissatisfaction, rebellion and anarchy leading 
eventually to death, and through death to new forms of life. For 
life I regard as indestructible. 

"All matter lives, and everything that lives possesses intelli- 
gence. Consider growing corn, for example. An atom of oxygen 
comes flying along the air. It seeks combination with other atoms 
and goes to the corn, not by chance, but by intention. It is seized 
by other atoms that need oxygen, and is packed away in the corn 
where it can do its work. Now carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen 
enter into the composition of every organic substance in one form 
of arrangement or another. The formula CHO, in fact, is almost 
universal. 

" Very well, then, why does a free atom of carbon select any 
particular one out of 50,000 or more possible positions unless it 



thomas a. edison's panpsychism. 177 

wants to ? I cannot see how we can deny intelligence to this act 
of volition on the part of the atom. To say that one atom has an 
affinity for another is simply to use a big word. The atom is con- 
scious if man is conscious, is intelligent if man is intelligent, exer- 
cises will-power if man does, is, in its own little way, all that man 
is. We are told by geologists that in the earliest periods no form 
of life could exist on the earth. 

' ' How do they know that ? A crystal is devoid of this vital 
principle, they say, and yet certain kinds of atoms invariably ar- 
range themselves in a particular way to form a crystal. They did 
that in geological periods antedating the appearance of any form 
of life and have been doing it ever since in precisely the same 
way. Some crystals form in branches like a fern. Why is there 
not life in the growth of a crystal ? Was the vital principle spe- 
cially created at some particular period of the earth's history, or 
did it exist and control every atom of matter when the earth was 
molten ? I cannot avoid the conclusion that all matter is com- 
posed of intelligent atoms and that life and mind are merely syno- 
nyms for the aggregation of atomic intelligence. 

' ' Of course there is a source of energy. Nature is a perpetual 
motion machine, and perpetual motion implies a sustaining and 
impelling force. 

"When I was in Berlin I met Du Bois-Reymond, and, wag- 
ging the end of my finger, I said to him, ' What is that ? What 
moves that finger?' He said he didn't know; that investigators 
have for twenty-five years been trying to find out. If anybody 
could tell him what wagged this finger, the problem of life would 
be solved. 

"There are many forms of energy resulting from the com- 
bustion of coal under a boiler. Some of these forms we know 
something about in a practical way, but there may be many others 
we don't know anything about. 

"Perhaps electricity will itself be superseded in time, who 
knows? Now, a beefsteak in the human stomach is equivalent to 



178 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

coal under a boiler. By oxidisation it excites energy that does 
work, but what form of energy is it ? It is not steam pressure. It 
acts through the nerve-cells, performs work that can be measured 
in foot pounds, and can be transformed into electricity, but the ac- 
tual nature of this force which produces this work — which makes 
effectual the mandate of the will — is unknown. 

"It is not magnetism, it doesn't attract iron. It is not elec- 
tricity, — at least such a form of electricity as we are familiar with. 
Still, here it is necessary to be guarded, because so many different 
forms of electricity are known to science that it would be rash to 
say positively that we shall not class vital energy as a form of elec- 
trical energy. We cannot argue anything from difference in speed. 
Nerve-force may travel as fast as electricity, once it gets started. 
The apparent slowness may be in the brain. It may take an ap- 
preciable time for the brain to set the force going. 

" I made an experiment with a frog's leg that indicates some- 
thing of the kind. I took a leg that was susceptible to galvanic 
current. The vibration produced a note that was as high as a pic- 
colo. While the leg was alive it responded to the electrical cur- 
rent ; when it was dead it would not respond. After the frog's 
leg had been lying in the laboratory three days I couldn't make it 
squeal. The experiment was conclusive as to this point : The 
vital force in the nerves of the leg was capable of acting with speed 
enough to induce the vibration of the diaphragm necessary to pro- 
duce sound. 

" Certainly this rate of speed is greater than physiologists ap- 
pear to allow, and it seems reasonable that there is a close affinity 
between vital energy and electricity. I do not say they are identi- 
cal ; on the contrary, I say they are very like. If one could learn 
to make vital energy directly without fuel, that is, without beef- 
steak in the stomach, and in such manner that the human system 
could appropriate it, the elixir of life would no longer be a dream 
of alchemy. But we have not yet learned to make electricity di- 
rectly, without the aid of fuel and steam. 



THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE. I 79 

"I believe this is possible ; indeed, I have been experiment- 
ing in this direction for some time past. But until we can learn 
to make electricity, like nature, out of disturbed air, I am afraid 
the more delicate task of manufacturing vital energy so that it can 
be bottled and sold at the family grocery store will have to be de- 
ferred. 

" Electricity, by the way, is properly merely a form of energy, 
and not a fluid. As for the ether which speculative science sup- 
poses to exist, I don't know anything about it. Nobody has dis- 
covered anything of the kind. In order to make their theories 
hold together they have, it seems to me, created the ether. But 
the ether imagined by them is unthinkable to me. I don't say I 
disagree with them, because I don't pretend to have any theories 
of that kind, and am not competent to dispute with speculative 
scientists. All I can say is, my mind is unable to accept the the- 
ory. The ether, they say, is as rigid as steel and as soft as butter. 
I can't catch on to that idea. 

"I believe that there are only two things in the universe, — 
matter and energy. Matter I can understand to be intelligent, for 
man himself I regard as so much matter. Energy I know can take 
various forms, and manifest itself in various ways. I can under- 
stand also that it works not only upon, but through, matter. What 
this matter is, what this energy is, I do not know. 

" However, it is possible that it is simply matter and energy, 
and that any desire to know too much about the whole question 
should be diagnosed as a disease ; such a disease as German doc- 
tors are said to have discovered among the students of their uni- 
versities, — the disease of asking questions." 



THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE. 

Mr. Thomas A. Edison's article is full of sugges- 
tions which invite further discussion. We must here 



l8o THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

limit ourselves solely to those which touch the prob- 
lem of Panpsychism and Panbiotism. 

Any one who has read Mr. Edison's article will 
be struck with the strange coincidence that obtains 
between his and Professor Haeckel's views. The 
famous naturalist considers what he calls panpsych- 
ism as the corner-stone of his monism : he says that 
atoms possess souls ; and in a similar way the famous 
inventor believes in the intelligence of atoms ; he de- 
clares that atoms are endowed with minds. There is 
certainly a deep truth in this conception of nature ; 
and yet we cannot accept it in the way it is presented 
by either Professor Haeckel or Mr. Edison. 

With reference to Professor Haeckel's views we 
have explained why atoms, the actions of which are 
not endowed with meaning, have no soul, and also 
why they cannot feel pleasure and pain. It remains 
for us to explain why atoms are not in possession of 
intelligence. 

What is intelligence? 

That reaction upon a stimulus which takes place 
in the way it does because of the presence of mean- 
ing, is called mental, or intelligent action ; and the 
ability to adjust action to mental representations is 
intelligence. 

Intelligence is a psychical quality, and the psychi- 
cal process which is preparing to act with intelligence 
is called deliberation. Deliberation is the successive 
revival of several soul-structures, either of memories 



THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE. l8l 

of former experiences, or of rules derived therefrom, 
or of advice formerly received, including also new 
combinations of these mental structures, and keeping 
in view the probable results of the intended action. 
In a word, deliberation is thought, and thought is an 
interaction among meaning-freighted feelings. 

Among these ideas, which in so far as they can in- 
fluence action (i. e., purposive motions) are called 
"motives," the strongest one will determine the re- 
sult. Now, any atom of non-organised matter, say 
an atom of hydrogen, acts (as we said above) with 
spontaneity. It is in this sense as much alive as is 
any ever so complex vegetable or animal substance. 
It is self-acting, and its action reveals the innermost 
nature of its being just as much as the action of the 
, man shows the character of the man. 

There is, however, a great difference between the 
action of animal beings, whose action is regulated by 
the meanings of their feelings, which in their totality 
we call the soul, and the actions of inorganic matter, 
of crystals, minerals, gases, chemical elements, and 
gravitating masses, all of which we comprise under 
the name "inanimate nature." The stone's fall does 
not depend upon any representative feeling ; it de- 
pends solely upon that quality of the stone which we 
popularly call its weight. Nor has the falling stone 
any choice whether to fall or not to fall. Under cer- 
tain circumstances it falls. There is no act of delib- 
eration preceding the fall. Nor has it any choice con- 



l82 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

cerning the direction of its fall. The surrounding 
conditions, viz., its position with regard to the centre 
of the earth together with its mass, determine the 
process. The stone's action can satisfactorily be ex- 
plained without attributing to it psychical qualities. 
The stone possesses no soul; it is void of mentality; 
and although we believe that everything, organised 
or unorganised, is endowed with subjectivity ^by which 
we understand the conditions of psychical life, or the 
potentiality of feeling and consciousness), this sub- 
jectivity can only be analogous to the blind impulse 
of the stone's mass. If some other, psychical or men- 
tal, subjectivity were present, we should say that it 
apparently does not enter as a factor in the determi- 
nation of the event. Accordingly such an assumption 
is gratuitous. There is subjectivity, but there is no. 
intelligence. There is potentiality of feeling, but 
there is no consciousness. There is present the ele- 
mentary condition of that something which is going 
to develop into mind, but there is no mind ; there 
is no meaning-freighted awareness of the surrounding 
conditions. 

Says Mr. Edison : 

" The intelligence of man is, I take it, the sum of the intelli- 
gence of the atoms of which he is composed." 

The sum total of the intelligence of the atoms in 
a human body (if, in this connection, for the sake of 
argument, we grant that atoms are intelligent) would 
not as yet make up the intelligence of man. Suppose 



THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE. 1 83 

we are contemplating a mosaic picture or inscription. 
Are such compositions really only the sum of the 
little stones? Are they not rather a certain peculiar 
form in which these colored stones are arranged? It 
is not the sum of the stones that makes the picture, 
but the form of their composition. The picture is 
not contained in any single one of them, nor is it the 
whole number of all the single stones : it originates 
through their peculiar combination and consists of 
the form in which they are combined. 

Mr. Edison's explanation of the soul, applied to 
this example of a mosaic picture, would be as follows: 
Every little stone is in itself a little mosaic picture. 
The whole picture of the mosaic is the sum of the 
little pictures of the stones of which it is composed. 

The intelligence of the soul, however, is not even 
as yet the form in which feeling structures combine ; 
it originates with the representative faculty of the 
feeling structures. The soul is the organised totality 
of a set of images and abstract mental symbols repre- 
senting the qualities, the influences, and the inter- 
actions of the different objects of the surrounding 
world, the thinking subject included. 

Says Mr. Edison : 

"Every atom has an intelligent power of selection and is 
always striving to get into harmonious relation with other atoms. 

The latter is true ; the former is an error. Every 
atom "is always striving to get into harmonious rela- 
tion with other atoms"; this is its nature; and its 



184 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

nature being stable, consisting of certain inalienable 
and intrinsic qualities, the atoms act with consistency. 
Certain atoms, say atoms of hydrogen, are of such a 
nature as to combine with certain other atoms, say 
atoms of oxygen, into molecules that form a certain 
substance of peculiar properties, which, if each atom 
of oxygen combines with two atoms of hydrogen, 
would be H2O, or water. This substance again, hav- 
ing certain definite qualities, will in a temperature be- 
low freezing-point crystallise at a definite angle. The 
angle of crystallisation being the same for all mole- 
cules H2O, the result will necessarily be one of most 
marvellous regularity. And not being able to observe 
the atoms in their secret activity, not knowing all the 
details of nature's marvellous laboratory, we are as- 
tonished to find such a wonderfully harmonious rela- 
tion. And yet, considering the nature of things, we 
are urged to confess that it is the result of an inevitable 
necessity, which takes place according to strict math- 
ematical laws. 

Although every atom strives, according to its na- 
ture, to get into harmonious relation with other atoms, 
we do not see any "intelligent power of selection" 
in the province of inorganic nature. Every atom of 
inorganic substances acts according to its nature in 
one and the same way throughout. There is no choice, 
no selection, allowed. Choice and selection are facul- 
ties that are reserved for the higher domains of psychi- 
cal life, which originates in the domain of animal ex- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL DUALISM. 185 

istence when meaning, conditioned by the presence 
of sentiency, rises into being and creates the soul. 

Supposing that through some combination of 
atoms their subjectivity be combined in such a form 
as to produce sentiency or feeling, we can very easily 
understand how this feeling will in time become rep- 
resentative of the conditions by which it is affected. 
The soul does not consist of the atoms of its organ- 
ism, nor of the sum of the qualities of the atoms. The 
soul consists of something more subtle than matter : 
the soul consists of the meaning that is attached to 
the different forms of the feelings which obtain in liv- 
ing organisms. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL DUALISM. 

Prof. F. Max Miiller as well as the late Prof. 
Thomas Hill Green, the founder of the Oxford tran- 
scendentalist school, start from the assumption, that 
man's mental activity is performed by a something 
which is quite distinct from its functions. This some- 
thing is the thing-in-itself of the human soul. Prof. 
F. Max Miiller says: 

"If mind is the name of the work, what is the name of the 
worker ? .... It is what we may call the ego as personating the 
self ; it is what other philosophers call the monon. Let us call 
therefore the worker who does' the work of the mind in its various 
aspects, the Monon or the Ego." 

This conception which asks for the worker of the 
work is based upon a materialistic view of the human 



l86 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

organism. An organism is not a dead machine which 
must be set a-going by somebody who attends to it ; 
it is not like a piano which needs a player to elicit 
music from the slumbering chords. Organisms are 
active and not passive, they are living and not dead. 
Every part of an organism is a worker and so is the 
whole. And if we speak of its "life" we must bear 
in mind that "life" is an abstract which denotes a 
certain inseparable quality of the organism. The work 
and the worker are two abstracts of one and the same 
thing. The reality from which these terms have been 
abstracted is "something working." This something 
working does not consist of a worker and his work, 
but the worker is in every part of his work. The 
worker of our mental activity is the function of the 
work. The two are identical. 

The objection is made : "Whence does the activ- 
ity come which appears in the realm of organised 
life." The answer is: Activity is a universal quality 
of all existence. There is no such thing as absolutely 
inert matter. Every chemical element combines with 
other elements spontaneously, according to its inher- 
ent nature and not through the influence of a worker 
manipulating its atoms. Spontaneity is a universal 
feature of reality. Nature is throughout self-working 
activity. And this, its most remarkable character, 
is preserved in its highest efflorescence in the soul of 
man. 



ENGLISH TRANSCENDENTALISM. 187 



ENGLISH TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

Mr. F. C. Conybeare, an Oxford scholar and per- 
sonal disciple of Professor Green the leader of Eng- 
lish transcendentalism, has elaborated his master's 
soul-conception in an article entitled "Professor Clif- 
ford on the Soul in Nature," which appeared in The 
Monist, Vol. II., No. 2, pp. 209-224. There Mr. 
Conybeare assumes the existence of a Self, independ- 
ent of the reality from which the idea of self has been 
abstracted, and attempts to prove his proposition as 
follows : 

" In truth there can be no relation of before and after between 
the two terms except for a self which takes note of the one dis- 
appearing and of the other appearing ; and whenever we speak of 
things following one another we tacitly presuppose a self before 
whom the procession passes." 

The transcendentalist adopts, in the realm of psy- 
chology, the error of atomism. If we accept the view 
that the world consists of isolated atoms, we are at a 
loss how to bring the atoms into relations; the unity 
of every group of atoms, every thing and every system 
of things will become a mystery. And if we look 
upon feelings as unrelated things-in-themselves, their 
connection becomes a deep problem. Mr. Conybeare 
solves this problem of the connection that obtains 
among the feelings supposed to be atomical, by postu- 



l88 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

lating a relation-producing entity, called the self. He 
says : 

" No link is left, save a connecting self." 

And this assumed entity of a connecting self or ego 
is taken to be " the heart and centre of reality. " Real- 
ity, that which we have to deal with in real life and 
what is commonly called the objective world, appears 
as a second class of reality in comparison with this 
assumed thing-in-itself of our existence. The thing- 
in-itself is thus regarded as something realer than 
real ; it is conceived to be a reality of a higher de- 
gree. 

Mr. Conybeare is very explicit in the explanation 
of his transcendental "self." He says: 

"Feelings constitute a conscious self when they become the 
feelings of a conscious self and not before, for except as gathered 
up in the unity of a self which has [sic !] memory and remains the 
same throughout its differences, feelings can be neither new, nor 
repeated, nor joined by links." 

What does "self" mean? What can it mean? 
What is the "unity of the self"? These are ques- 
tions which have not been answered to our satisfac- 
tion by the transcendentalists. Whenever they speak 
of the self, they lose themselves in mysticism. Their 
"self" is an assumed entity which they have carefully 
divested of everything real and actual. Their self is 
transcendental and not a being of the world; it is a 
myth. 

For the sake of comprehending the nature of our 



ENGLISH TRANSCENDENTALISM. l8g 

soul, we had better recapitulate the simplest possible 
instance of psychical activity. 1 

An irritation takes place in some sentient sub- 
stance. This irritation produces an extra-commotion. 
We must say "extra-commotion" because all sen- 
tient substance is in a state of constant activity. This 
extra-commotion causes the sentient substance to as- 
sume a certain form, and while it lasts, a certain and 
special feeling takes place in some part of the sentient 
substance. This certain and special feeling ceases 
as soon as the extra-commotion, caused through the 
irritation, abates. There can be no doubt that cer- 
tain effects of this extra-commotion remain. Its trace 
is left in the sentient substance and this trace is pre- 
served in the constant whirl of the sentient being's 
normal activity. Now, we suppose that an irritation 
of the same kind takes place in the same sentient sub- 
stance. This second irritation finds the substance no 
longer in the same condition. It finds the sentient 
substance prepared to receive it. The feeling which 
now appears is no longer a simple feeling. The sec- 
ond irritation causes a commotion as much as the first, 
and this commotion acts as a stimulant upon the trace 
left by the first irritation, This trace being again in 
a state of extra-commotion is revived and the same 
kind of feeling appears. Thus the second irritation 
is accompanied by a state of awareness in which two 

IThe same problem has been discussed on pages 173-174 in our discus- 
sion of Panpsychism. 



igo THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

feelings are blended, the revival of the former feeling 
and the feeling of the present irritation. 

The preservation of traces left in sentient substance 
is the condition of memory. We understand by mem- 
ory the psychical aspect thereof, and the act of reviv- 
ing, so that their correspondent feelings will reap- 
pear, is called recollection. 

"Memory" has been the greatest stumbling-block 
to our psychologists as well as to our philosophers. 
Even modern works written from a positive stand- 
point treat memory frequently as a mysterious faculty 
of the mind. Mr. Conybeare speaks of the self as 
having memory, while in fact, memory is one of the 
factors, indeed the most important factor, of all mind- 
activity. 

Says Mr. Conybeare : 

"Such a feeling [of the togetherness of two feelings] would 
involve memory and memory involves self-hood." 

Memory does not involve any transcendental self- 
hood. True self-hood, viz., that which can reason- 
ably be understood by self-hood, is not prior to, not 
the cause of memory; self-hood, i. e. , the personality 
of a man, the organised unity of the psychical aspect 
of a human organism, is consequent upon, it is the 
effect of, memory. Memory is the main factor and 
producer of self-hood. Self-hood is the product of 
memory. 1 

1 See the chapter " Soul Life and the Preservation of Form," in The Soul 
of Man, p. 418. 



ENGLISH TRANSCENDENTALISM. igi 

The self is also called the ego. What is the ego? 

The ego is a Latin term used in philosophical lan- 
guage to denote the pronoun "I," and the pronoun 
"I" is quite a definite nerve-structure situated in 
quite a definite place of the centre of language. Like 
all words, so also the term " I " is a symbol. Its gen- 
eral meaning is unequivocal ; it stands for the name of 
the speaker. It stands for Mr. Brown, if Mr. Brown 
speaks of himself, for Mr. Smith, if Mr. Smith speaks 
of himself, etc. 

What does Mr. Brown mean when he says, "I 
speak, /act, /will, /feel pain, /feel pleasure, /in- 
tend," etc. ? 

When Mr. Brown speaks, a certain number of 
word-structures in the centre of language are in a 
state of commotion, innervating the muscles of speech. 
Correspondent to this physiological process, a state 
of consciousness obtains, which is an awareness of the 
situation. When he adds: "I say this," it is again 
a special nerve-structure that is irritated into action 
and he might just as well say: "Mr. Brown says 
this." The idea of Mr. Brown, viz., of his own per- 
sonality, is just as much an idea as his idea of Mr. 
Smith. The main difference consists in the fact that 
the idea of man's own personality is very much more 
important than the ideas representing other person- 
alities. 

The nervous structure representing the feeling of 
the idea "I" must be the centre of innumerable ner- 



ig2 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

vous tracts connecting it with all those activities which 
when performed are thought of as done by ourselves. 
The "I do this" is almost constantly ready to fill the 
present state of consciousness and to accompany any 
action performed through the innervation of other 
brain structures. 

Sentient substance is not always actually feeling. 
It is feeling only when in a state of extra-commotion. 
Systems of sentient substance are living organisms ; 
all its structures are interconnected and most so those 
structures in which sentiency as well as motory im- 
pulses are differentiated — viz., the nervous structures. 
The extra- commotions which agitate the different 
nervous structures, the memories of former sense- 
perceptions, of sounds, of words, of ideas, depend 
upon the conditions of the moment. Now this and 
now another structure will represent the summit of 
commotion, and the feeling of the strongest commo- 
tion at a given time will under normal conditions ap- 
pear as the contents of consciousness. It is as it were 
the focus in which the attention of the whole organ- 
ism is centralised. That which appears in the focus 
is clear and distinct, while the other weaker feelings 
rapidly disappear into the undistinguishable general 
feeling of the organism as a whole, commonly called 
ccenaesthesis or Gemcingefuhl. 

The centre of attention is constantly changing; 
yet whenever a thinking creature stops to ask himself, 
Who is doing this? Who is willing this? Who is 



ENGLISH TRANSCENDENTALISM. I93 

thinking this? the answer is given: "I am doing 
this; I am willing this; I am thinking this." The 
structure of the little pronoun "I" seems to be the 
most irritable spot in the brain ; it is always ready to 
force itself into the foreground. 

The answer, "I am doing this/' proposes the to- 
tum pro parte. The whole personality is supposed to 
do what a part of it is performing. The hands are 
executing this work ; these hands of course are inner- 
vated from certain regions of the brain. Some parts 
of the personality are in a relative rest and have noth- 
ing to do with the work presently on hand. A commo- 
tion in a certain number of brain-structures represents 
the physiological aspect of a deliberation, perhaps the 
planning of some action. Psychologically considered 
certain ideas appear successively and sometimes 
simultaneously in the focus of consciousness. The 
ideas disagree and other ideas replace them until a 
combination is formed in which the ideas do agree. 
This state of agreement brings a temporary peace 
into the tumult of conflicting ideas ; the plan is ready; 
it may pass into action at once, or, perhaps, the ego- 
structure will appear in consciousness and will quietly 
think : "I will do it." 

When certain motor nerve-structures are inner- 
vated, they cause under normal conditions their re- 
spective muscles to contract, they produce motion. 
Under normal conditions the nervous process accom- 
panying the idea "I will raise my arm" serves as an 



194 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

irritation upon the cortical centre of arm-raising, yet 
it is not the "I" that in some mystical way raises the 
arm. The idea "I" has as little and as much to do 
with this discharge of energy as any other idea. The 
idea "I" is not the power behind the veil that pro- 
duces the will. 

What is will? As soon as some plan of action is 
joined with the idea that it should be executed, sup- 
posing it be not counteracted by any stronger idea 
that it should not be done, this combination repre- 
sents a will. A will accordingly is the psychological 
aspect of an incipient action, and it is usually, or if it 
is not it can always be accompanied with the thought 
"I will it." But this accompanying thought however 
is not the energy displayed in the act of willing. 

The " I will it," or " I do it," or "I perceive it" 
being always ready to appear together with the strong- 
est idea in the field of consciousness, the term "ego" 
has acquired a specialised meaning. It means that 
part of a man's personality which at the time is the 
contents of the "I will," or "I think," i. e., it is his 
present state of consciousness. Every organism is a 
coherent system and thus all the feelings of an organ- 
ism naturally blend into a unity. The strongest feel- 
ing however appears in the normal state of waking in 
a distinct clearness thus representing a centre of con- 
sciousness. 

However, whether we use the term "ego" in the 
sense of the idea "I" meaning the whole personality 



THE EGO-CENTRIC VIEW ABANDONED. 195 

of the speaker, or in the sense of the present centre 
of consciousness, it designates in either case a definite 
reality, the origin and action of which are natural 
facts and as plain as any other psychological phe- 
nomena. 

Neither the ego-idea nor the centre of conscious- 
ness are transcendental. The former is as little mys- 
tical as are the ideas dog, horse, man, etc. ; the latter 
no less miraculous than any other feeling or display of 
sentiency. 

THE EGO-CENTRIC VIEW ABANDONED. 

The contrast between the old and the new psy- 
chology appears strongest in their conceptions of the 
ego. The former believes that the ego is "the thing- 
in-itself " of man's soul and takes it to be the centre 
of all psychical phenomena, while the latter looks 
upon the ego-idea as one idea among many other co- 
ordinated ideas and considers the centre of conscious- 
ness as the strongest feeling at a given time, which 
as such naturally predominates over and eclipses the 
other feelings of the organism. 

The new psychology brings about a change of 
standpoint similar to that effected by the Copernican 
system in astronomy. In astronomy the geo-centric, 
and in psychology the ego-centric, standpoint had to 
be abandoned. And all things seem to be upset to 
those who are still accustomed to the old conception. 
To them the physical and moral world-conceptions 



I96 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

appear to become impossible. If the new view were 
correct, so they imagine, the entire universe would 
break to pieces. All our modes of speech are formed 
in accord with the old view. We speak of sunset and 
sunrise, and so in our daily conversation the little 
pronoun "I" plays a part which makes it seem as if 
the ego-idea were the centre of all soul-life and as if 
this "I" were the active agent in all acts of willing 
and doing. 

The advantage of the Copernican system lies in 
this, that we can think of the motions of the sun and 
the planets in a systematic and unitary conception 
without being either involved in contradictions or 
obliged to invent mysterious qualities in the stars for 
explaining the velocities, directions, or other phe- 
nomena of the celestial bodies. The most important 
advantage however is the practical applicability of the 
new theory. 

The old theory of the soul necessarily leads to 
mysticism. Fictitious facts of a transcendent char- 
acter must be invented in addition to the facts ob- 
served, in order to explain the latter. The new theory 
after abandoning the ego-centric standpoint of the 
thing-in-itself of a soul shows the facts of psychic life 
in an harmonious and unitary conception. All facts 
agree among themselves and we are not in need of 
supplementing them with mysterious inventions. It 
must be emphasised, at the same time, that the new 
conception throws a new light upon ethics ; it shows 



PERSONALITY AND EVOLUTION. 197 

the error and perversity of all egotism, for it would 
be a mistake to act as if the ego were really the centre 
of soul-life. 

Here the new psychology comes in contact with 
religion. What is the practical aim of all the great 
religions of the world but a surrender of the ego, a 
renunciation of the self as the centre of our being, 
and the acceptance of the moral lav/ as the regulative 
power of our actions? The new psychology gives a 
justification and a scientific explanation of Christian 
ethics while the latter from the standpoint of the old 
psychology necessarily appears as mystical and super- 
natural. 

PERSONALITY AND EVOLUTION. 

The centre of consciousness is constantly shifting, 
while the personality of a man is relatively constant, 
certain important ideas being stable and thus lending 
character to the whole system of thoughts and inten- 
tions. 

The term personality indicating the selfhood of a 
man is used in several ways. First, we understand 
by a man's personality his bodily appearance ; sec- 
ondly, the whole system to his mentality, viz., his 
knowledge, his temperament, his character; thirdly, 
the history of his life, past, present, and future ; 
fourthly, his position in life, his possessions, his con- 
nections^ his influence ; or at last we mean by it all 



I98 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

these four items together. In all these applications 
the man and his personality are conceived as a unity. 
And they are a unity. Wherever the term unity is 
applicable, it is most certainly applicable here. All 
the many facts of the history of his life are one con- 
tinuous process; all the parts of his body are parts of 
a system, and the world of his ideas also will under 
normal conditions bear a certain harmonious char- 
acter. Wherever in any soul the concord among the 
ideas has been disturbed, a state of unrest will ensue 
until the peace of soul is restored in one or another 
way. But with the same necessity as every water 
surface tends to present a smooth level, so the ideas 
in one and the same soul tend to come to a state of 
agreement. As every water surface has its ripples, so 
even that mind which has attained an undisturbed 
peace of soul is constantly confronted with some prob- 
blems — be they ever so trifling — producing some slight 
disturbances in his life. 

The unity of a self, it is apparent, is the inevitable 
consequence of given conditions. It is not something 
which exists outside the personality and its constituent 
parts; it is in the personality and it develops together 
with it. Mr. Conybeare supposes that "the unity of a 
self remains the same throughout." This is an error, 
and this error vitiates Mr. Conybeare's whole concep 
tion of growth and evolution. He says : 

"Properly speaking a thing can only be said to grow or de- 
velop when it remains the same with itself all through the process 



PERSONALITY AND EVOLUTION. 1 99 

and unfolds therein capacities which were anyhow latent in it to 
start with." 

The truth contained in this proposition may be 
expressed thus : When a thing develops, some part 
of it remains the same during the change, so that a 
continuity is preserved. Yet every change of a part 
of an organism — such is the intimate interconnection 
of all its parts — produces an alteration, be it ever so 
small, of the whole unity. And in the course of evolu- 
tion the character of the whole thing may be changed. 
Think of the growth of a caterpillar into a butterfly, 
or of an egg-cell into a man. However, the changes 
in the character of an adult man will become slighter 
and slighter the stronger certain features of his exist- 
ence preserve their sameness, although the most stable 
personality will, nevertheless, be subject to, at least, 
unimportant changes as long as life lasts. 

Mr. Conybeare, like his master Professor Green 
and all the transcendentalists, is still under the influ- 
ence of a belief in the thing-in-itself. The unity of 
an organism which is the product of the co-operation 
of its parts, is not some independent thing whose 
business it is to gather up their single activities and 
bring them into relation with one another. The unity 
of a self is the combination of all those relations which 
make of its parts a systematised whole, and this unity 
is changing together with its constituents ; as a matter 
of fact, we have to state that it does not remain con- 
stant or the same with itself. Mark that I do not 



200 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

deny the unity of the soul, nor do I underrate the 
enormous importance of this unity. But I do deny 
that this unity exists independent of its parts. It is 
as much immanent in its parts as is melody in its 
notes. There is as little a transcendental self-hood 
as a melody in itself independent of its sounds. 

The assumption of a transcendental unity which 
throughout the process of evolution remains the same 
with itself naturally leads to a wrong conception of 
what Mr. Conybeare calls "latent capacities." The 
terms potential existence and latent qualities are fer- 
tile and useful ideas, but we must beware not to em- 
ploy them incorrectly. Any heap of iron ore can be 
called a potential sword. This is a mode of speaking 
which expresses the possibility that the ore can be 
changed somehow into a sword. But the sword does 
not exist at all, not even as a latent quality of the ore. 
The ore has no latent qualities of that kind. Those 
qualities of the ore which represent the potential 
sword are very patent to everybody who knows the 
art of using them properly and changing them into 
an actual sword. 

We may say that the hen's egg contains a poten- 
tial chick ; but this is a mere mode of speech devised 
to say that the egg can be changed into a chick under 
certain conditions. There is no chick at all contained 
in the egg and nothing that is like a chick. 

Evolution is not, as the name suggests, a process 
of unfolding ; evolution is, as Christian Friedrich 



PERSONALITY AND EVOLUTION. 201 

Wolff calls it, an "epigenesis," i. e., the process of 
the additional growth of new formations. The chick 
is something different in kind from the egg. The 
unity of the egg-cell organism in the yolk is radically 
different from the unity of the full-fledged chick. The 
former shows traces of irritability but not of conscious- 
ness, while the latter exhibits unmistakable symptoms 
of psychical activity. The formation of the chicken- 
soul is a new formation as much as the growth of 
feathers. The feathers of the chick are an additional 
growth ; there are no latent feathers in the egg. We 
might express ourselves to the effect that the egg con- 
tains the potential existence of feathers, but with the 
same logic we might say the egg contains a potential 
chicken broth. 

It is, however, true that something remains con- 
stant in the process of growth. There is a preserva- 
tion of form in the constant change of material par- 
ticles, and this is the physiological basis of memory, 
so that a man of eighty may say, "I remember when 
I was a child," although not one particle of the sub- 
stance of which the child consisted is left in him. 
The continuity produced through this preservation of 
form makes growth and evolution possible. 

The preservation of memory-structures constitutes 
the possibility of reviving the feelings of the past ; it 
constitutes a preservation of soul. The material parts 
of the body are thrown out but the form being pre- 
served, the soul remains. And this preservation of 



202 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

the soul is the basis of its additional growth through 
new and enlarged experience. The soul of the child 
is not lost in the man ; it is preserved. It has lost 
certain features and at the same time it has gained 
new features, it has developed, and the unity of the 
soul has more or less changed with the development 
of the body. 

What is true of the individual is also true of man- 
kind. Mankind as a whole is different in the savage 
and in civilised society. Nevertheless the latter has 
developed from the former. Certain traits have been 
dropped, other radically new features have appeared. 
That which was valuable in the soul of primitive man 
is not lost. The better part of his soul still lives in 
the highest developed man of to-day ; the continuity 
is preserved. And to-day all our moral instruction 
aims at this, so to live that our souls also will be pre- 
served in the future evolution of humanity. The gist 
of ethics is to make the soul immortal. 

THE "PFERDEBURLA." 

An interesting discussion of philosophical prob- 
lems in a popular form appeared in the Deutsche Rund- 
schau of 1897 under the strange title of "Das Pferde- 
biirla by F. Max Miiller. In it the famous Oxford 
Professor prints a letter from a German-American 
reader of his in Pennsylvania, who, being a native of 
Silesia and a farmer plowing his fields with horses, 
not with oxen, signs himself Das schlesischc Pferdebiirla, 



THE "PFERDEBURLA." 203 

i. e., the horse farmer from Silesia. The letter of our 
Pennsylvania countryman is an exquisite piece of com- 
mon sense; it is in many respects crude, but shows a 
healthy disposition of mind and an excellent temper. 
He has encountered many troubles in life, but has 
never lost his good humor. Considering the tran- 
siency of life, he does not mind the buffets of outrage- 
ous fortune and is prepared to meet the end joyfully. 
He finds that the evil in the world is constitutional 
and indispensable. Thus he hails badness as well as 
stupidity, for life would be tedious if all people were 
virtue-machines. As matters are, he says, we enjoy 
the merry fight and cherish dear ideals in our bosom. 
He expresses his joy at the liberalism of the Professor, 
but he doubts whether he is truly free, which he ex- 
presses in such sentences as these : 

"Max, du bist vielleicht auch noch ein Gottesfabler. Die 

englische Atmosphare mag dir zur Entschuldigung dienen ! 

Max, ein ganz Freier bist du immer noch nicht." 1 

[ " Max, perhaps thou art still a God-romancer .... The English 
atmosphere may be thy excuse !. . . .Max, a truly free man, thou 
art not yet."] 

Prof. F. Max Muller is one of the most accom- 
plished controversionalists, not only of the present 
time, but of all times ; and if he understands anything, 
he understands the art of condescension. He can 
argue condescendingly with dukes and other person- 
ages of high social rank, but it requires a special grace 

1 There is a special touch of humor in Pferdebiirla's employment of the 
familiar du with the great Oxford Professor. 



204 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

to condescend to the Pferdebiirla, and the Professor 
has succeeded in doing it. He replied to the Pferde- 
biirla's criticism in a long private letter, which, how- 
ever, remained unanswered up to the publication of 
the June number of the Deutsche Rundschau. Did the 
Pferdebiirla die in the meantime, or was the letter not 
properly addressed ? We cannot tell. 

The humor which pervades the controversy be- 
tween the Pferdebiirla and the Professor is merely an 
external feature ; the essence of the controversy is 
quite serious and of deep interest, philosophical as 
well as practical. The Pferdebiirla sums up his opin- 
ion in these words (pp 204-205): 

" Modern life is for eyery one who has an open mind a real 
high school. Max, all the German scholars, or at least the major- 
ity of them, are still under the illusion that man's spirit is a prius. 
Not at all, Max! Spirit is a development, a phenomenon of evo- 
lution. One should think it impossible that a thinking man who has 
ever observed a child could be of another opinion. Why shall we 
seek ghosts behind matter ? Spirit is a function of living organ- 
isms, and a goose and a chicken possess it also. But why, Max, 
should we not merrily be satisfied with the limits of our cognition, 
as conditioned by experience, and surrender the infamous fable- 
making and tyrannical lies? The sole love which I at my fiftieth 
year still cherish in my bosom is the unsatiable, dear longing for 
that truth which fate has denied us." 

The Pferdebiirla is an unschooled but by no means 
an ignorant man. His education is apparently auto- 
didactic and unsystematic, but he is well read and 
knows not only such works as Omar Khayyam but 



PROF. F. MAX MUELLER. 205 

also Schopenhauer and Diihring, He appears to con- 
tradict himself by first positively declaring that spirit 
is a development, that it is useless to hunt for ghosts, 
that we must surrender the invention of fables and 
lies, and then speaking of his longing for the truth 
which fate has denied us. If the views he proclaims 
are not the truth, how can he wind up the confession 
of his faith with the declaration that truth is not forth- 
coming? And if there is mystery left, why does he 
not recognise the fact that there is a reason for invent- 
ing fables. His philosophy must be very one-sided for 
"the truth which fate has denied him," remains after 
fifty years still his sole love and he cherishes it dearly 
in his bosom. 

PROF. F. MAX MULLER. 

Now, we ask : What has the great Sanskrit scholar 
to say in reply to the Pferdebiirla's criticism? The 
Professor gives the Pennsylvania farmer all the infor- 
mation he asks for, and sets forth his reasons for still 
believing in ghosts. 

Prof. F. Max Muller's letter to the Pferdebiirla is 
interesting because it is the quintessence of his phi- 
losophy and the gist of his religious confession of 
faith. 

Prof. F. Max Miiller is a philologist, and his whole 
method of thought is philological. His philosophical 
arguments are ultimately based on reflexions upon 
linguistic relations. He recognises the permanence 



206 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

of universal types such as dogs, men, trees, etc. These 
types, or Platonic ideas, are the thoughts behind the 
things, and the great philologist argues: "If there 
are rational thoughts in nature, there must be also a 
rational thinker," and this rational thinker must be 
"in, above, and behind nature." 

The same argument is repeated in other forms 
with reference to natural selection, evolution, and 
every event that takes place, especially in man's ac- 
tivity of the senses. If there is natural selection, 
there must be, according to Prof. Max Miiller, some 
one who selects; for there can be no choice without 
a chooser, and every happening presupposes an agent 
that causes it. Seeing, hearing, touching, would be 
impossible if there were not a receiver of sensations. 

Prof. F. Max Miiller's theory is a very old theory; 
it is the doctrine of Self as taught in ancient Brah- 
manism ; and he frankly confesses that it is practically 
the same doctrine as the theory of the ghost-soul. He 
adds: st Ohne solches Seelengespenst kommen wir 
nicht aus ! " 

Prof. F. Max Miiller's ghost is not as substantial 
as the ghosts of spiritualists, but it is just as real. It 
is not definite, but quite indefinite, and would thus 
be very accommodating ; but its existence is never- 
theless earnestly insisted upon. It is practically noth- 
ing but a personification of the unknown quantity, 
which cannot be found in matter and energy. The 
Professor says : 



PROF. F. MAX MUELLER. 207 

"Names do not name him. That is true. Perhaps it had 
been better to call him x or the Unknown One. But if we only 
know what we mean, why not call him spirit or sfiiritus, i. e., 
breath. You call him the spook, or Seelengesfenst. The Brah- 
mans seem to me to have found the best expression, they call him 
the Urgrund of the soul, of the ego, 'Self,' and the Urgrund of 
the non-ego of the world-soul, of God, the highest Self. They go 
further, and regard these two Selfs as ultimately the same Self." 

The theory of self, or, as it is called in Sanskrit, 
"atman," dominated the philosophy of India until 
Buddha came and taught the doctrine of the "anat- 
man," basing upon the illusoriness of the notion of 
self his ethics of universal compassion and love. Bud- 
dhism flourished for about a thousand years in India, 
and this period was the age of highest development 
of Indian art, science, and poetry. Even the ancient 
productions of Brahmanical literature received their 
final shape during the Buddhist period of Indian his- 
tory. After Buddhism was expelled from India, the 
philosophy of the atman was systematised by Shan- 
kara, and became again predominant in the minds of 
the Hindus. Modern Hinduism is saturated with the 
belief in the atman, and all Hindu religion to-day is 
practically an atman philosophy mythologically ex- 
pressed. 

What is the atman theory weighed in the balance 
of science? 

The assumption of a self within, above, and be- 
hind things is simply the reification (or hypostatisa- 
tion) of the unity that originates by a combination. It 



208 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

is a personification of actions and processes and may 
thus be considered as mythology taken seriously. A 
wrong interpretation of language is perhaps at the 
bottom of the whole mistake. We say "the wind 
blows," and the metaphysical philosopher would have 
to regard this process, which is nothing but air in mo- 
tion, as an action performed by an agent. There is 
the blowing that takes place and there is the wind, 
which is the agent that does the blowing. Sensations 
take place in the eye, thoughts are being thought in 
the brain. They are, according to Prof. F. Max 
Mtiller, actions of a seer, a hearer, a thinker, who is 
the self of the man, who is that which is behind his 
soul, who is his atman. When we ask ourselves, 
What is a watch ? we come to the conclusion that the 
watch is not the dial, nor the hands, nor the spring, 
nor the wheels ; but a peculiar combination of all 
these parts so arranged that the spring carries the 
hands around on the dial in a regular and definite ad- 
justment to point out the time. According to the at- 
man theory we ought to say, Here are a number of 
wheels, a spring, a dial, and hands; none of these 
parts is the watch. The watch itself is an unknown 
quantity within, above, and behind the watch, and we 
call it "the watch in itself" or "the atman of the 
watch," or the "watchself. " As to the actions of all 
these parts, we ought to know that not the spring 
exercises a pressure, but the watch-self in the spring; 



PROF. F. MAX MUELLER. 200, 

and not the hands turn round the dial, but the watch- 
self turns in the hands. 

The Buddhist philosopher, Nagasena, has brought 
out the anatman theory very clearly in his discussion 
with King Milinda in the carriage simile. The sage 
claims that persons are "name and form" and noth- 
ing else, not selfs possessing a name and form, and 
Milinda challenges him on the ground that this theory 
implies the non-existence of personality. Nagasena 
asks the king concerning all the parts of the carriage 
— whether they are the carriage, and when he denies 
these questions, he concludes (in the same way as the 
king did concerning the non-existence of personality) 
that the carriage must be non-existent. This reductio 
ad absurdum proves that the personality of man too is 
a combination of certain qualities and the assumption 
that there is a self within, above, and behind the man 
is redundant. The anatman theory does not deny 
either the reality of the carriage or of personalities; it 
only denies that the unities which originate through 
combination are selfs, atmans, or things-in-them- 
selves. 

The philosophy of the Brahmans is (to use a mod- 
ern term) metaphysicism ; Buddhism is anti-meta- 
physical. The metaphysical philosopher is a philol- 
ogist who reifies the words which he has coined by 
abstraction to denote actions or combinations or uni- 
versal types. Thus reality appears to him as merely 
phenomenal and the word by which he denotes this 



2IO THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

reality, the thought (or noumenon) which signifies it, 
is supposed to be the reality behind the phenomenal 
appearance. The reality behind the phenomenal is 
therefore called the noumenal, or thought-existence, 
and thus while reality is degraded into a mere sham, 
the mental reflexion of things is supposed to be the 
sole true reality. 

This theory leads to a dualistic world-conception 
which divides the world into the noumenal and the 
phenomenal. A monistic view is regained only by a 
mental annihilation of the phenomenal. The corol- 
laries of this view as characterised by Prof. F. Max 
Miiller are as follows : 

"What do we do with our senses? They seem to be our 
wings, but if closely analysed they are our fetters, our prison 
walls. 

' ' We live in a prison, in a den, as was said already by Plato. 

"Some philosophers say : Indeed our senses may be limited, 
but our understanding, and especially our reason, are unlimited ; 
and they recognise nothing that would surpass them (understand- 
ing and reason). 

" There is nothing that justifies us in saying that this self has 
had a beginning and that it will have an end. The ego had a be- 
ginning, so has the jyersona, the temporal mask which develops 
in the present life, but not the self which wears the mask. 

"Everything which is called ego, personality, character, etc., 
has developed upon earth ; it is earthly, but not the self. 

"What remains is the eternally One (das ezuig Eine)} the 
eternal self, which without beginning and without end animates 
all of us. 

1A better translation might be " the eternal onehood." 



*v PROF. F. MAX MUELLER. 211 

" The self is the bond which unites all souls, the red thread 
which runs through all existence, and the recognition of which 
alone affords us a recognition of our true being. 

" 'Know thyself means to us no longer know thy ego, but 
know what lies beyond the ego, know the self — the self which runs 
through the whole world, through all hearts, which is the same 
for all men, the same for the highest and the deepest, the same 
for creator and creature, the atman of the Veda, the oldest and 
truest word for God. 

" Fellow-man is fellow-self." 

Speaking of evolution, and of his adversaries who 
advocate the ape-theory of the origin of species, Prof. 
F. Max Miiller says : 

" They have taught us that the body in which we live was 
first a simple cell. What the word ' first ' in this connection may 
mean is another matter which need not concern us here, but this 
cell was really what the word signifies, the cella of a silent hermit, 
the self. 

"Within this cell there is a shining point {ein heller Punkt), 
and beyond this shining point our microscopes cannot go, although 
whole worlds may be contained in it. 

" If we accept the cell-theory in its ultimate conception, what 
sense can there be in the late Henry Drummond's proposition (in 
his A scent of Ala n, p. 187) that the progenitors of birds and the 
progenitors of men were at a very remote period one and the 
same ? Would not a little quantum of strict logical thought at 
once cut off the bold hypothesis that we derive our origin directly 
or indirectly from a menagerie ? Every man and also the whole 
of mankind has passed through its own uninterrupted evolution on 
its own account. No man, no human cell, originates in the womb 
of an ape or any animal, but only in the womb of a human mother 
fecundated by a human father. Man does not owe his origin to an 
abortion." 



212 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. ' 

Having recapitulated some salient features of the 
atman theory which as stated by both Shankara- 
charya and Prof. F. Max Miiller, stand in contradic- 
tion to modern science, we ask, "Is the notion of a 
self a mere illusion, or is there a truth hidden in it? 

We believe there is a truth hidden in the idea of 
a self, for while there are no things-in-themselves, 
the organisms and other unities which originate by 
combination are not nonentities. They are realities. 
The Brahmanical atman conception of the self is an 
inflated value, but the self of a man, his personality, 
is a very important fact. There is no metaphysical 
self, but there is a real self, and the error of meta- 
physicism cannot be overcome by denying the exist 
ence of the self but by explaining its true nature. 

III. IDEAS, THE ETERNAL TYPES OF THINGS. 

Prof. F. Max Miiller combines his theory of the 
self with a Christianised version of Plato's doctrine of 
ideas as seen in the light of mediaeval Realism : 

" Behind all things lies the thought or the idea. If there are 
rational thoughts in nature, there must be a rational thinker. Be- 
hind all trees, oaks, birches, pines lies the thought, the idea, the 
form, the word, the logos of a tree. One can never see a tree, one 
sees only an oak, a birch, a pine, never a tree ! But the thought, 
or the idea of the tree confronts us in all trees as realised and 
multiplied. The same is true of all things. No one has ever seen 
an animal, a man, a dog, but only a St. Bernard, a greyhound, a 
beagle, and closely considered not even these. What is the con- 
stant, the ever-returning in dogs, that by which they all resemble 



IDEAS, THE ETERNAL TYPES OF THINGS. 21 3 

one another, the invisible form in which they all are cast ? That 
is the thought, the idea, the logos of dog. Now, is there a thought 
without a thinker ? 

1 ' Where do we have a tree except in our conception ? And 
what do conceptions consist of if not of our sensations ; and these 
sensations, imperfect though they are, exist only in us, for us, 
through us. The perceived object itself is and remains to us out- 
side, a transcendent, thing-in-itself, — everything else is our work." 

In another passage the Professor declares, closely 
following Schopenhauer's 1 argument against the doc- 
trine of evolution: " Every species represents an act 
of will, a thought," and he adds, to indicate that 
every species is rigid, "An diesem Gedanken kann 
nicht genittelt werden, so nahe auch oft die Ver- 
suchung liegt." Further Prof. F. Max Mtiller would 
allow us to doubt all the articles of faith in religion 
but one. He says: "One fundamental article must 
remain. There is a thinker and a governor in the 
world." 

All these notions are a strange mixture of Realism, 
Nominalism, Schopenhauerianism, Platonism, Paley- 
ism, and what not. 

In the dictionary we can group words, we can 
classify them in categories, and no one is allowed to 
take away an iota from a word ; but in reality the 
types of things fluctuate. The baby, the child, the 
youth, the man, are quite definite types of different 
ages, and no one can be allowed to mix them up. 

1 Schopenhauer was a bitter enemy of the doctrine of evolution and ridi- 
culed Lamarck severely for having propounded it. That was before the days 
of Darwin. 



214 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

That is a good rule for a grammar lesson, but in prac- 
tical life we find them changing from one into the 
other in spite of Prof. F. Max Muller's protest. The 
same continuity holds good in the distinction between 
genus and species. The dog is a species of animal, 
and the poodle is a species of dog. He who knows 
something about dogs will be able to enumerate a 
goodly number of poodle-species. Why we should 
see the lower species only, as Prof. F. Max Miiller 
declares, and not the genus to which it belongs, is a 
mystery which I suppose means that the concrete 
dog only is seen, but the generalised concept dog is 
thought and not seen. 

The truth is we do see a dog in every poodle, as 
well as in every St. Bernard, in every beagle, and in 
every greyhound. The type dog is fully and com- 
pletely in every genuine dog. It is true that the idea 
dog, as a concept, is our own work; but a general 
idea is not an addition to the things but an abstraction 
from our perceptions. It is a mental symbol expressed 
by a sound which signifies the general features of a 
number of sensations. The genus dog is not more 
complex than the species poodle, it is simpler ; the 
higher genus quadruped is still simpler, and the gen- 
eral term animal is the simplest of all. These con- 
cepts are not made by additions, but by omissions. 
The incidental features are dropped and the essential 
ones retained, but the more general is always con- 
tained in the less general ; the type is always present 



REASON. 215 

in the concrete object from which it has been ab- 
stracted. The universal exists in every one of its par- 
ticular representations. 

What is the idea of a tree but a special form of 
thought, a combination of mental activities of a pecu- 
liar kind which represents certain objects of our ex- 
perience ? The idea of a tree is our concept, but is 
the tree in our conception alone and nowhere else? 
Certainly not. The concept tree is alone in our con- 
ception, but the tree is outside ; the tree is that which 
the concept of a tree has been invented to signify. 
Ludwig Noire* argues well in favor of the theory that 
man alone, being a speaking animal, can conceive the 
idea of a tree ; no animal is in possession of ideas. 
But Noire would scarcely have asserted that for that 
reason animals could not see trees. 

That the objects of our sense-perceptions remain 
outside is true ; none will deny that, but they are for 
that reason not transcendent in the philosophical 
sense of the word ; they do not remain unknown and 
unknowable. They are not things-in-themselves in 
the Kantian sense. The idea of a tree, if it be a cor- 
rect conception and appropriate representation of the 
object in question, constitutes our knowledge of the 
tree. For what is knowledge if not correct represen- 
tation? 

REASON. 

Prof. F. Max Miiller regards it as obvious that 
"we can as little go beyond the horizon of our senses 



2l6 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

as we can jump out of our skin." He makes this 
statement to prove the limits, not of the senses, but 
of our understanding and reason. Everybody knows 
that the senses have limits, but as it is difficult to 
understand what the limits of reason are, the Profes- 
sor declares that reason is nothing but addition and 
subtraction, and, pillorying the exaggerated reverence 
in which reason is frequently held, he adds: "When 
people, even philosophers, speak of reason as if it 
were a jewel which could be placed in the drawer 
of the human cranium, they are myth-mongers and 
nothing else." Arguing from Locke's famous dictum 
that there is nothing in our intellect which has not 
before been in our senses, F. Max Mtiller concludes 
that in spite of the extensions of our horizon by addi- 
tion and subtraction we feel everywhere our limited- 
ness, our ignorance, which, considering the limited- 
ness of our senses (these prison walls in which the 
self is confined), cannot be otherwise. 

Now it is true that our senses are limited, but it is 
not true that reason is limited. 

Reason, by the bye, is not mere adding and sub- 
tracting, but any purely formal operation, especially 
combining and separating. Addition and subtraction is 
one particular kind of reason, viz., arithmetical ratio- 
cination ; it is a quantitative combination and separa- 
tion, but there are also qualitative combinations and 
separations which do not result in sums, but in new 
products. The composite memory-picture, or con- 



REASON, 217 

cept, of a tree, for instance, is not a mere addition of 
several sensations in which every single impression 
remains intact, but a fusion in which the particular 
features are blurred and that which is common in all 
of them, the type of a tree, becomes prominent and 
distinct. The concept of a tree is something novel in 
the domain of sentiency. The general features of an 
object are contained in its several sensations, but by 
being singled out and set aside the abstract idea be- 
comes as new as a new-born baby. And yet, the rise 
of concepts is not a miracle, but it is the necessary 
result of a combination. 

While I gladly grant that Reason is a very simple 
operation, — analysed in its simplest functions, it is 
nothing but a combining and separating, — I cannot 
approve of Prof. F. Max Miiller's derogatory remarks 
concerning Reason. To be sure Reason is not a jewel 
that can be locked up in a drawer, but it is much 
more than a jewel; Reason is not a lamp, lit in the 
brain; it is much more than a lamp, it is all the in- 
tellectual light we have ; Reason is not a goddess to 
be worshipped by the mob (as proposed during the 
French Revolution); Reason is much more than a 
goddess. There is no need of showing contempt for 
anything because it is simple. Reason is the more 
wonderful the simpler it is, and the feats of Reason 
are not less important because the} 7 are as plain as 
daylight, obvious in their truth, transparent as glass, 



2l8 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

and as unlimited as are the operations of counting 
and measuring. 

Reason can indeed go beyond the horizon of our 
senses and our comprehension can, after all, fly on 
the wings of Reason into spheres that will remain for- 
ever inaccessible to our senses. Does Prof. F. Max 
Miiller not know of the discovery of Neptune, the ex- 
istence of which was positively known to Leverrier, 
even before Galle directed his telescope to the place 
where the planet had been calculated to be? Is that 
not a going beyond the horizon of our senses? 

Prof. F. Max Miiller has frequently uttered dis- 
paraging remarks concerning the reverence people 
show for reason, but he himself assumes always a wor- 
shipful attitude when speaking of the Logos. What 
difference is there between Logos and Reason, except 
that the former is Greek, the latter Latin? The for- 
mer slipped into the New Testament, the latter into 
the terminology of philosophy and of common speech ; 
the former has thus become a theological expression, 
the latter the party cry of Liberals. Shall we de- 
nounce Reason as ungodly and sing hymns to the 
divine Logos? Let us be fair and recognise the truth 
wherever it is, and let us boldly acknowledge that the 
Logos that was in the beginning, the Logos that is 
eternal and omnipresent, is simply combination and 
separation ; or, as Prof. F. Max Miiller would have 
it, addition and subtraction. But if the Logos is so 
simple, let us beware lest we have a contempt for it. 



FORMS-IN-THEMSELVES, NOT THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. 2IO, 

Its simplicity does not make it less divine, but is only 
one more reason to glory in its divinity. 



FORMS-IN-THEMSELVES, NOT THINGS-IN-THEM- 
SELVES. 

Kant was a great philosopher, but his idea of the 
unknowableness of things-in-themselves is, after all, 
a great error, based upon the argument that purely 
formal thought, being a priori, is purely ideal. Kant's 
misconception originates by unconsciously identifying 
the terms " ideal" with " subjective." Every think- 
ing being can construct in his own mind the mathe- 
matical laws that govern the motions of stars; hence 
Kant concludes that the mind dictates these purely 
subjective laws to the objective world ; it is so con- 
structed that it cannot help contemplating the world 
as being in time and space and as being subject to 
the categories of Reason, especially the necessary 
connexion of events, called causation. If form were 
a mode of thinking only and not a quality of the objec- 
tive world, then of course, the objective world would 
be unknowable and we could never know what things 
are in themselves. But if formal thought is only one 
special case of form that finds its analogies every- 
where in the world ; if the congruence of the laws of 
purely formal thought with the purely formal laws of 
nature, is the result of a sameness of operation in 
two different spheres, then the things are knowable 



220 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

and there is no cause for despairing of reason and its 
applicability to nature. 

The conception of things-in-themselves is a ma- 
terialistic conception of the problem ; the very term 
is misleading. That which constitutes the suchness 
of a thing, its peculiar character, is its form and noth- 
ing thingish, nothing that has anything to do with 
matter or substance of any kind. Therefore the thing- 
in-itself, the self of the thing, can, properly conceived, 
mean only the form of the thing ; and the form of the 
thing is its type, its logos, its noumenon, and here 
we agree with Prof. F. Max Miiller's recognition of 
the eternity of all logoi. The forms of things exist 
not only in and with the things in which they are 
actualised, but are eternal types ; they constitute a 
superreal reality, a supercosmic order of things, a 
supernatural nature of existence ; they are the abso- 
lute that governs all relations, the uncreated that 
shapes all things, the unconditioned that conditions 
every event, every action, every being. 

The forms of existence are not single entities; 
they are not separate, so that one cannot change into 
another. They constitute one continuous system and 
admit very well of evolution from lower simple types 
to higher and ever higher types. Nor can we say that 
the eternal logoi or ideas are products ; they are not, 
as Prof. F. Max Muller claims, Machwerk manufac- 
tured by a Macher, a manufacturer. They are not 
creatures, they are uncreated. They are not made by' 



FORMS-IN-THEMSELVES, NOT THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES. 221 

God, they are God themselves. The ancient Chris- 
tian dogmatists denied that the logos is a manufac- 
ture ; to them the logos was uncreated, but (as they 
expressed it) was the only begotten son born of the 
Father from eternity and equal to Him in divinity. 

The world of forms is not chaotic, but definite and 
determined. We can imagine all kinds of forms, but 
those forms which are possible are limited according 
to law. The first instance of the determinedness of 
form is found in the chemical elements which are very 
limited in number. The chances of divergency in- 
crease in the spreading branches and higher compli- 
cations of the tree of life, but they too are limited in 
their possibilities to definite types, and the laws of 
life are rigid according to the law of causation. In 
the highest sphere of life when reason appears incar- 
nated in speech, we are again confronted with definite 
laws of rational action, resulting finally in a clear con- 
ception of life and its aims, which will naturally find 
expression in moral endeavor. Whatever things or 
beings originate, they are always mere realisations of 
the eternal order of the universe. All creation is, in 
this sense, an actualisation of possible types. Every 
invention is (as the word indicates) a finding out of a 
form which existed from all eternity as a possible 
combination, viz., as a form itself, only that it had 
not as yet been known. 

The watch, the steam engine, the dynamo, are 
forms of existence which as pure forms are eternal 



222 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

types that must be discovered if they are to be actual- 
ised in concrete existence ; and in this sense they are 
indeed, as Prof. F. Max Miiller says, within the things, 
behind them, and above them. The difference be- 
tween Prof. F. Max Miiller's view of things-in-them- 
selves, and this view of forms-in-themselves, is simply 
this, that the former is tinged with metaphysicism 
and mysticism, while the latter is both antimetaphys- 
ical and antimystical. 

THE SELF OF MAN. 

Having seen that the selves of things are not meta- 
physical essences or entities, but consist in the forms 
that constitute their type and condition their such- 
ness, we are naturally led to the conclusion that man's 
self also is the form of his being ; and there is noth- 
ing that can be adduced to contradict this proposi- 
tion. 

Personality, says the Buddhist philosopher, is 
name and form ; and the continuity of life, according 
to the maturest results of physiology and psychology, 
is conditioned by a preservation of form. The con- 
tinuity of a man's personality is based upon his mem- 
ory, and memory is the psychical aspect of a preser- 
vation of cerebral structures. Hence we can justly 
say that every man is a certain form realised in a 
bodily incarnation. The material of which this form 
is composed is constantly replaced by new material, 
and indispensable though it be for bodily appearance, 



THE SELF OF MAN. 223 

it is yet of merely incidental significance. In other 
words, we are not what we eat, but we are the form 
into which the food we eat is moulded. 

Man's personality is based upon a preservation of 
form. The form of our organs of sense, our brain- 
structures, our life-memories is that which continues 
while the matter and the energy which we use pass 
through the system of our body in constant and rapid 
transit. We may say that matter assumes a certain 
shape, but it is more correct to say that a certain 
shape assimilates a certain amount of matter. At 
any rate, a man is as little the matter of which his 
body consists, as ideas are the ink in which the words 
that express them are written. Nor is man the breath 
(or Haucli) which passes through his lungs. Not even 
the feelings qua feelings can be said to be the prop- 
erly human of man. Every animal, even every amoeba, 
is sentient, it is possessed of feeling. Human senti- 
ments are definite forms of feeling. 

Everywhere form is the essential feature that 
makes a thing what it is, and even sentiency such as 
it obtains in living creatures as a characteristic fea- 
ture of animal-life must be due to a definite form of 
organisation. 

The doctrine of self is, to Prof. F. Max Miiller, 

the corner-stone of all religion and the essence of all 

philosophy; but when he enters the field of ethics the 

tables are turned, and the self is dismissed. He says: 

"At any rate, we agree that everything that is done from love 



224 THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 

of God and our neighbor is good ; everything that is done from a 
seeking of self is bad." 

Prof. F. Max Muller's theory of self serves him 
only as a philosophical comfort for the lovers of self, 
but finds no application in ethics. 

Self-seeking is wrong, as we all agree, — except 
such philosophers as Nietzsche and Steiner; and yet 
in a certain sense self-seeking is not wrong. Indeed, 
the preservation of self and its further evolution to 
higher stages is a duty. Prof. F. Max Muller's self, 
being the same forever and aye, cannot grow, but the 
real self (that which, according to Prof. F. Max Miil- 
ler, is only the phenomenal self), the totality of soul- 
forms of man, can by new insight acquire new fea- 
tures. It can degenerate, but it can also improve and 
be added to. And in this sense ethics is a seeking of 
self; it is self-culture, but all self-culture is simply 
the realisation of the eternal pattern of perfection. 

The type of a rational being is an eternal form of 
existence which can be realised in life. That which 
constitutes the humanity of man is not a feature which 
descended upon him from brute ancestors. The ape 
lacks rationality, and in this sense I can frankly agree 
with Prof. F. Max Miiller in his objections to certain 
one-sided assertions of naturalists. That something 
which begot the humanity of man is the eternal Rea- 
son, the Logos, the Rationality that was developed 
in his soul when he began to systematise his experi- 
ences. Man's begetter, in this sense, is not his brute 



THE SELF OF MAN. 225 

progenitor, but the eternal order of the universe, which 
naturally and appropriately, and indeed justly and 
most beautifully, is symbolised under the allegory of 
a divine Father. 1 

* * 

We have touched upon the salient features of the 
problem of self, and have only to indicate in conclu- 
sion that all the religious and moral aspirations of 
man receive in this solution, as offered by the Philos- 
ophy of Form, a more exact and scientific explana- 
tion. The immortality of the soul appears in a new 
light, the idea of God is purified of paganism and 
mythology; and the moral code, especially the ap- 
parently anti-natural idea of universal good will — in- 
cluding the love of enemies — is found to be rooted in 
the eternal conditions of existence. 

IThe problem of the idea of God is treated in The Open Court, October, 
1897; further in a pamphlet entitled The Idea of God and in The Monist Vol, 
VIII. pp. 415-445, pp. 610-615, and Vol. IX., pp. 106-130, pp. 289-291, pp. 300- 
305, and pp. 626-628. 



INDEX. 



AB = — BA, 40, 41. 

Absolute, 29, 68. 

Adrishta, 38. 

Agassiz, 129. 

Agnosticism, 108; a period of tran- 
sition, 64 ; the philosophy of ne- 
science and negation, 65; Spencer's, 
78-79; Haller's.go; of modesty, no. 

Aim, the highest, 169. 

Amitabha, 38. 

Anatman theory, 209. 

Anschauung, 19, 20. 

Antimetaphysical, 131. 

Antimetaphysical trend, Locke's, 117. 

A priori, 18 ; Kant on, 32 ; misunder- 
stood by Littre, 70-71. 

Aristotle, on matter and form, 24, 26; 
on relations, 25 ; philosophy of, 27. 

Aspects, two, 41, 43, 45. 

Atman, what is the? 207 et seq. 

Atom defined, 27; a Hilfsconstruction, 
136; as a thing-in-itself, 137; the 
philosopher's, a child of metaphys- 
ics, 137; a fiction, 141. 

Atomic theory, 135. 

Atomism, the error of, 187. 

Attention, and unity of conscious- 
ness, 156 et seq.; the focus of, 192. 

Berkeley on substance, 4. 

Betweenness, relation as, 23, 26. 

Bible passages, truth in, 168. 

Blue flower, 4. 

Body and outerness, 46. 

Body and soul, 41, 162. 

Bohme, Jacob, 99. 

Boltzmann, 50, 135. 

Books, the immortality of, 162-163. 



Brahmanism, 206. 

Brick in the building, 44. 

Causation, 52, 219; is transformation, 
67. 137; Hume's error concerning, 
125; raison d'etre and, 112; a mo- 
tion, 125. 

Children unto Abraham, 54. 

Christ, 54. 

Clifford, 84, 85, 187 ; Schopenhauer 
and, 79-89; on things-in-themselves, 
79; his "mind-stuff," 80, 86. 

Ccenassthesis, 192. 

Cognition, 103; ideal of, 33; philo- 
sophical and scientific, 62; as de- 
scription, 104; Jodl on philosophi- 
cal, 107; philosophical, 109; same- 
ness and, 112. 

Comprehension, 51. 

Comte, Auguste, 61, 64, 65, 74, 112; 
his hierarchy of the sciences, 62; 
his doctrine of the three stages, 

65; and Kant, 72; Diihring on, 

75, 76, 78 ; imitated the Roman 
Church, 77. 

Concepts are fusions, 216-217. 

Consciousness, the unity of, 156-158. 

Conservation of matter and energy, 
69. 

Consistency, monism is, jy. 

Constructions, formal laws are men- 
tal, 37. 

Constructs, mental, 131. 

Continuity in growth, 199. 

Conybeare quoted, 187, 1S8, 190, 198, 
199. 

Cosmical motions, 134. 

Critique of Pure Reason, 32. 



228 



THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 



Crystallisation explained, 184. 
Curve, two sides of a, 55. 

Death, 89. 

Deliberation, description of, 180, 181. 

Description, Kirchhoff on knowledge 
as, 5 ; knowledge as, 48-52, 74 ; 
man's soul a, 60; cognition as, 104. 

Deussen, on Kant, 94 et seq.; his 
modernised metaphysics, 90-100. 

Dualism, Kant's, 12; F. Max Miiller's, 
208. 

Duality, 41. 

Du Bois-Reymond's sevenfold world- 
riddle, 83. 

Diihring, 205 ; on Comte, 75, 76, 78. 

Edison, 55, 180, 182, 183 ; his pan- 
psychism, 175-179. 

Ego, what is the? 191-195; not a thing- 
in-itself, 195 ; religion a surrender 
of the, 197. 

Ego-centric view abandoned, the, 195 
-197. 

Egotism, error of, 197. 

Empedocles, 170. 

English transcendentalism, 187-195. 

Enjoyment not the purpose of life, 
168. 

Epigenesis, evolution is, 201. 

Epistemology, 61. 

Essence unknown, 4 ; Locke on, 115- 
116. 

Eternal, all things are, 44. 

Eternality and reason, 151. 

Ether and matter, in. 

Ethics, gist of, 202 ; a seeking of self, 
224 ; theory of self not serviceable 
in, 224. 

Evolution, is not unfolding, 200; im- 
mortality and, 159; is epigenesis, 
201. 

Experience, inner and outer, 18; 
space and time derived from, 16; 
the formal extracted from, 22 ; sub- 
jectivity is inner, 82; knowledge 
derived from, 123 ; Hume on, 124 ; 
Kant on, 124 ; pure form abstracted 
from, 124. 

Explanation, 48, 49, 50 ; Professor 
Jodl on, 107; Schopenhauer on, 111. 



Facts, 47; are relations, 26 ; to start 
from, 92. 

Faust, attitude in philosophy, 1-6; 
quotation from, 1 ; his hope a mis- 
take, 53; mistake of, 58. 

Fawcett, Edward Douglas, 145, 159, 
160, 166. 

Feelings symbolise things, 147. 

Fichte, 99, 153 ; on God, 152. 

Final and first cause, 67. 

Fools, merriment of, 166. 

Form, importance of, 8 ; not a sub- 
stance, 13 ; unity a matter of, 13 ; a 
feature of reality, 19-23, 149; de- 
fined by Kant, 19 et seq.; memories 

and preservation of, 22; and 

matter, Aristotle on, 24, 25 ; com- 
mon to object and subject, 32; all 
difference a difference of, 33 ; at- 
taches to the objective existence 
of the subject, 36; philosophy of, 
64; laws of, 86-87; * aws of. super- 
real, 87; differences due to, 138; 

and uniformity, 139 ; mentality 

and the universal laws of, 148-153 , 
immateriality of, 163 ; and mate- 
rialism, 164, 165 ; the essential fea- 
ture, 223. 

Formal and purely mental, Kant 
identifies the, 9. 

Formal extracted from experience, 
the, 22. 

Formal law, God and the, 38. 

Formal laws are mental construc- 
tions, 37. 

Formal thought and science, 9. 

Form-in-itself, 149. 

Forms are given, 20. 

Forms-in-themselves, 55, 99; not 
things-in-themselves, 29, 218-222, 

and things-in-themselves, 29, 

30, 218 et seq. 

Fourth Gospel, Logos of the, 152. 

French positivism, 112 ; represented 
by Comte and Littre, 65-78. 

Fundamental Problems quoted, 104- 
105, no. 

Galle, 218. 

Gesetzmassigkeit, 127. 
Ghosts, 84. 



229 



God, and the formal law, 38 ; soul an 
image of, 60; not a mind, 88; as 
metaphysical speculation, 94-95 ; a 
feature of reality, 95 ; great enough, 

99 ; and soul, 143, 165 ; Fichte on, 

152 ; is unique, 155 ; mind an incar- 
nation of, 169; the logoi are, 220, 
221. 

Goethe, 2, 83, 84; quoted, 1; his 
Fazcst, quotation from, 54 ; on Na- 
ture's interior, 83-84; on Haller, 
90-91 ; his poem quoted, 91. 

Gold, the real essence of, 3. 

Gravitation, Prof. Jodl on, 107-108, 
"3- 

Gravity, cause of, 113. 

Green, Thomas Hill, 185. 

Haeckel, 55, yy, 89, 169, 172; his Pan- 
biotism, 170 et seq. 

Haller, Goethe on, 90, 91 ; his Agnos- 
ticism, 90. 

Happiness not the aim of life, 166. 

Hegel on thesis, antithesis, and syn- 
thesis, 154 ; his dialectical method, 
154-155. 

Henism, yy. 

Hierarchy of the sciences, 75. 

Horizon, unknowable compared to 
the, 105. 

Hume, 114, 115 ; his scepticism, 31, 
32,119-130; on reasoning, 120: his 
remedy, 122; inapplicability of his 
scepticism, 123; on experience, 124; 
his error concerning causation, 125. 

Huxley, 64. 

Hyperphysical, 152. 

7,191-195. (See also Ego and Selj) 
Ideal, defined, 35 ; the subjective and, 

31-39, 219 ; of cognition, 33 ; not 

subjective, 97. 
Ideality of pure reason, 33, 34. 
Ideas, are symbols, 28; the eternal 

types of things, 212-215. 
Identity, personal, 158. 
Ignorabimus of Du Bois Reymond, 83. 
Ignorabimus theory, the, 108. 
Immateriality of form, 163. 
Immortality, 45, 89. 157, 159-162; 

and evolution, 159. 



Inanimate nature, transformed to 

life, 42, 43. 
Infinite and zero, the, 106. 
Infinitude and mysticism, 106. 
Infinitude of problems, 104-105. 
Innerness and soul aspect, 46. 
Inseparableness of body and soul, 

157- 
Intelligence, the nature of, 179-185; 

what is it? 180. 
Interconnection of all things, the, 30. 
Inventions a finding of eternal types, 

221, 222. 
Irrational, 59. 

Jesus, soul of, 161. 

Jodl, Professor Friedrich, 101-130; 
his letters quoted, 91, 95-97, 103- 
104 ; on explanation, 107; on gravi- 
tation, 107-108, 113 ; on philosoph- 
ical cognition, 107; mysticism re- 
pugnant to, 114. 

Kant, 6 et seq., n, 71, 100, 151 ; iden- 
tifies the formal and purely mental, 
9; denies the objectivity of space 
and time, 10; declares space is 
ideal, 12; his dualism, 12, 31; on 
space and time, 15-19 ; his defini- 
tion of form, 19 et seq.; his defini- 
tion of matter, 19 et seq.; a nom- 
inalist, 29; on a priori, 32; on two 
sources of knowledge, 33 ; his term 
transcendental, 34, 35; his meta- 
physicism, 65 ; Laplace and, 67, 68 ; 
Comte and, 72; Professor Deussen 
on, 94 etseq.; paralogisms of, 95; 
on experience, 124. 

Kernel and shell, 91. 

Kirchhoff, 104, 107, 108; Mach-, 115; 
on knowledge as description, 5. 

Knowledge, relativity of 23, 30; Kant 
on two sources of, 33; as descrip- 
tion, 48-52, 74 ; sensations the basis 
of all, 49; a portrayal, 109; is rep- 
resentation, no; derived from ex- 
perience, 123. 



Language misleading, 
Lao-Tze's Taa, 38. 
Laplace and Kant, 67, 
Leverrier, 218. 



4» 15- 



230 



THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 



Lewes, Mr., 66. 

Life, the purpose of, 164-169; reser- 
voir of, 42; transformed from in- 
animate nature, 42, 43 ; as spon- 
taneity, 172. 

Light, objectively considered, 8; as 
rays, 141. 

Littre, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 78, 112. 

Locke, John, 3, 114, 115; on essence, 
115-116; his unknowable essence 
of things, 115-118; on substance, 
116; his anti-metaphysical trend, 
117; his position results in suspen- 
sion of judgment, 118. 

Logoi, are God, 220, 221 ; superreal, 
220. 

Logos, 38, 60, 150, 154; a reality, 153; 
reason and, 218; simplicity of the, 
218-219; man's begetter, the, 224; 
of the Fourth Gospel, 152. 

Mach, Ernst, 57, 107, 108, 131-139; on 
science as reconstruction of facts, 
5; -Kirchhoff, 115; on mechanical 
aspect, 132, 133. 

Macrocosm, 88. 

Man's soul a description, 60. 

Materialism and form, 164-165. 

Matter, Kant's definition, 19 et seq. ; 
reality and, 8 ; and form, Aris- 
totle on, 24, 25; idea of, a general- 
isation, 57 ; and energy, conserva- 
tion of, 69; ether and, in. 

Meaning a factor of mental action, 
181, 182. 

Mechanical aspect, Mach on, 132, 
133. 

Mechanics, molecular, 133. 

Meliorism, 167. 

Melody-in-itself, 13, 14. 

Memories and preservation of form, 
22. 

Memory, self-hood the product of, 
190. 

Mendeljeff's series, 146. 

Mentality and the universal laws of 
form, 148-153. 

Mephistopheles, 2. 

Metabolism, 158. 

Metaphysical residue in the systems 
of modern thinkers, the, 64-144. 



Metaphysical surd, elimination 
from philosophy, 1-6, 56-60. 

Metaphysicism. Kant's, 65. 

Metaphysics, in two senses, 56; is of 
no avail, 60; psychology and, 81; 
Schopenhauer on, 82; physics and, 
92 ; the philosopher's atom a child 
of, 137- 

Methodology, 61. 

Microcosm, 88. 

Milinda, The Questions of King, 93. 

Mind, 145; denned, 21; nature and, 
22 ; pure reason and, 33 ; originates, 
55; potential, 86; an incarnation 
of God, 169 ; purpose and, 175. 

Mind-forms, a reflection of the forms 
of objective existence, 22. 

" Mind-stuff," Clifford's, 80. 

Models to portray reality, 131. 

Molecular mechanics, 133. 

Monism, 55, 76-77; conceives the 
world as one whole, 29 ; is consist- 
ency, 77. 

Monistic conception, evidence of, 42. 

Monistic view alone can stand, 41. 

Moral instruction, aims of, 202. 

Motions, cosmical, 134. 

Muller, F. Max, 205-212, 214 et seq., 
220,222; quoted, 185, 207, et seq., 
215; his theory of self, 206; his 
dualism, 208; on ethics, 223-224. 

Mysticism, and infinitude, 106; re- 
pugnant to Prof. Jodl, 114. 

Mythology, beams with truth, 142; of 
science, 139-144 ; positivism with- 
out, 143. 



Nagasena, the Buddhist philosopher, 
93. 209. 

Nature and mind, 22. 

Neptune, discovery of, 218. 

Newton, 109; his laws, 26; his cor- 
puscular theory, 165. 

Nihilism, 44. 

Nirvana, 93. 

Noire, Ludwig, 214. 

Notions of reality to be purified, 47. 

Nominalism and realism, 28, 29. 

Nominalists on relation, 24, 25. 

Noumenon, defined as a thing 



231 



thought, 10 ; thing-in-itself and, 10; 
a mental sign, n. 
Numbers, 149, 150; constructed in 
mind, 17. 

Object and its qualities, the, n-15. 

Objects quite unknown, 7. 

Objectivity, the oneness of subjec- 
tivity and, 39-45 ; and subjectiv- 
ity are relations, 43, 44; reality a 
synonym of, 48. 

Ontological problem, the, 68-69 ; 
illegitimate, in. 

Ostwald, 135. 

Outerness, 48- body and, 46. 

Panlogism, 150; an old theory, 155. 

Panpsychism, 55 ; panbiotism and, 
169-175. 

Parallelism not a good name, 55. 

Paralogisms of Kant, 95. 

Percept, 47. 

Perception, 50. 

Personality, is real, 45 ; evolution 
and, 197-202; five meanings of, 197, 
198; as unity, 198; is name and 
form, 222; a preservation of form, 

223- 

Pferdebiirla, the, 202-205. 

Philosophical and scientific cogni- 
tion, 62, 109. 

Philosopher's stone, 53. 

Philosophy defined, 60-63 ; of sci- 
ence, 6, 62. 

Physics and metaphysics, 92. 

t, 59- 

Platonic ideas, 55. 

Positivism, 18, 64 ; commences with 
facts, 105; without mythology, 143. 

Potential chick, the egg a, 200, 201. 

Potential mind is no mind, 86. 

Problems can never be exhausted, 58. 

Prolegomena, 39. 

Psalmist's standard, the, 167. 

Psychological dualism, 185-186. 

Psychology and metaphysics; 81. 

Pure form abstracted from experi- 
ence, 124. 

Pure reason and mind, 33. 

Purpose and mind, 175. 

Quality and relation, 27. 



Rainbow, 7. 

Raison d'Hre and cause, 112. 

Realism and nominalism, 28, 29. 

Realists on relation, 24, 25. 

Reality, form a feature of, 19-23; 
matter and, 8; not a compound, 
40; two sides of, 40; of the objec- 
tive world, 45-48 ; means thingish- 
ness, 46; a synonym of objectivity, 
46-48 ; notions of to be purified, 47; 
not unexplained, 52. 

Real, space and time are, 16. 

Reason, 128, 147, 148, 215-219; ideality 
of pure, 33,34; uniqueness of, 38; 
is superreal, 86-87; universality 
and, 150; eternality and, 151; has 
no limits, 216; simplicity of, 217; 
Logos and, 218 ; wings of, 218. 

Reasoning (according to Hume) a 
petitio principii, 120; Hume on, 120, 

Recept, 47. 

Recognition a feeling of congruence, 
174- 

Reconstruction of facts, Mach on 
science as, 5. 

Relation, what is? 23 et seq.; things 
and, 23-31; facts are, 26; quality 
and, 27; things are bundles of, 27. 

Relations-in-themselves, no, 26. 

Relative, knowledge is, 23. 

Relativity of knowledge, 30. 

Religion, 130 ; a surrender of the ego, 
197. 

Representativeness the characteris- 
tic feature of the soul, 49. 

Reservoir of life, 42. 

Resistance and sensations, 47. 

Romanes, 47, 55 ; his Thoughts on Re- 
ligion , 130. 

Sameness, and cognition, 112; variety 
and, 154. 

Scaffolding, of facts, 131; as mythol- 
ogy of science, 140. 

Scaffold, usefulness of the, 143. 

Scaffolds, of science, 139; to be torn 
down, 142. 

Scepticism, Hume's, 119-130; a bane, 
122; inapplicability of Hume's, 123, 

Schiller, 97. 

Schopenhauer, 45, 84, 99, 100, 205, 213 ; 



232 



THE SURD OF METAPHYSICS. 



Willol, 80, 85-86; on the thing-in- 
itself, 80; on metaphysics, 82; on 
explanation, in. 

Science, a philosophy of needed, 6; 
formal thought and, 9. 

Scientific and philosophical cogni- 
tion, 62. 

Seal, imprint of a, 163 ; the simile of 
the, 163-164. 

Self, the idea of, 187; as a relation- 
producing entity, 188; F. Max Mul- 
ler's theory of, 206 ; there is a real, 
212; of man, 222-225; ethics a seek- 
ing of, 224 ; theory of, not service- 
able in ethics, 224. 

Self-hood the product of memory, 
190. 

Sensations, the basis of knowledge, 

49; and resistance, 47; develop 

into symbols, 49. 

Sensation symbolises objects, 174. 

Sense-impressions, meaning of, 174. 

Senses, developed gradually, 41,42, 
are limited, 216. 

Sentiency, elements of, 43 ; and 

subjectivity, 146. 

Shankaracharya, 212. 

Shell and kernel, 91. 

Simplicity of the Logos, 218-219. 

Slate and slate-pencil, 52. 

Soul, 189; and body, 41, 162; as- 
pect and innerness, 46; represen- 
tativeness the characteristic fea- 
ture of, 49: an image of God, 60; 
as metaphysical speculation, 94 95; 
a feature of reality, 95; real enough, 
99; God and, 143; as a thing-in it- 
self, 145-225; what is? 145-148; origin 
of, 172-175 ; compared to a mosaic, 
183; thing-in-itself as, 185. 

Soul-forms, preservation of, 157. 

Soul-monad, 156. 

Space and time, there is but one. 19; 
independent of thing-in-itself, 11 ; 
Kant on, 15-19; are real, 16; de- 
rived from experience, 16. 

Space, the product of abstraction, 
92; is ideal according to Kant, 12; 
non-existence of, unthinkable, 17; 
not a box, 93. 

Species, continuity of, 214. 



Spencer's agnosticism, 78-79. 

Spinoza, 99. 

Spirit, 145 ; words are, 161 ; para- 
mount, 164. 

Spontaneity, 170 et seq.; life as, 172, 
universal, 186. 

Subject as an object, the, 36. 

Subjective, the ideal and the, 31-39, 
219; ideal not, 97. 

Subjectivity, universal, 42; objectiv- 
ity and, the oneness of, 39-45; 

and objectivity are relations, 43, 
44; is inner experience, 82; devel- 
ops into mind, 88; sentiency and, 
146. 

Substance, in general, 74; Locke on, 
116; is changing, 158. 

Suchness, 149 ; not material, 220. 

Summum bo?ium, 165. 

Supermateriality, 153. 

Supernatural, 38, 87, 152. 

Superreal, reason is, 86. 87; laws of 
form are, 87. 

Surd, is not absurd, 59; thing-in-it- 
self a, 101 ; X as a, 104. 

Suspension of judgment, 64. 

Symbols, sensations develop into, 49, 

Systemology, 61. 

Tait, 136. 

Tao, Lao-Tze's, 38. 

Tennyson quoted, 30. 

Thing-in-itself, three meanings of, 
97-99; noumenon and, 10; in the 
Kantian sense, 11; the conception 
of unity and, 13; Schopenhauer on 
the, 80; time not a, 93; as pure 
form, 99 ; a surd, 101 ; hazy, 101 ; a 
self-contradiction, 107; the atom 
as a, 137; as soul, 185; ego not a, 
195- 

Thingishness, reality means, 46. 

Things, are bundles of relations, 27; 
relations and, 23-31. 

Things-in-themselves, 3, 6 et seq.; 
forms-in-themselves and, 29, 30, 218 
et seq.; forms-in-themselves not, 
29; Clifford on, 79; not objects, 
215. 

Things pass away, 44. 

Thing, the objective, n. 



233 



Thomson, 136. 

Thought the interaction of represen- 
tations, 147. 

Three stages, Comte's doctrine of 
the, 65. 

Time the product of abstraction, 92; 
not a thing-in-itself, 93 ; the meas- 
ure of change, 94. (See Space and 
time.) 

Transcendent and transcendental, 
34- 

Transformation, causation is, 137. 

Tree-in-itself, 15. 

Truth, in mythology, 139-144; in 
Bible passages, 168 ; mind hungers 
for, 169. 

Turgot, 65. 

Two aspects, 41, 43, 55. 

Two sides of reality, 40. 

Types are definite, 221. 



Understanding, the functio 



of, 21- 



Uniformity and form, 139. 

Unities are real, 212. 

Unity, a matter of form. 13 ; concep- 
tion of, and thing-in-itself, 13 ; a 
new factor, 14; variety and, 154- 



156; of consciousness and atten- 
tion, 156 et seq.; in personality, 198; 
of an organism, 199; transcenden- 
tal, an assumption, 200. 

Universality and reason, 150. 

Unknowable compared to the hori- 
zon, 105. 

Unreal, 48. 

Variety, unity and, 154-156; and 

sameness, 154. 
Vicious circle, 127, 128. 

Watch-in-itself, 14. 

Watch, the atman of the, 208. 

Will, is incipient action, 194 ; of 

Schopenhauer, 80. 
Wirklichkeit , 39, 40. 
Wolff, Christian Friedrich, 201. 
Words, are spirit, 161 ; reified, 209. 
Worker of the work, the, 181-186. 
World wisdom, 62. 

-V, 103-104 ; the metaphysical not un- 
known, 52-56; of metaphysics, 53; 
an unknown quantity, 81 ; as a 
surd, 104. 

Zero, the infinite and, 106. 



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